Woocommerce – List products based on variation

I need for a project to sort via a php variable the entire product list by a specific variation of a custom attribute, I am having trouble listing products that have a specific variation, i have tried multiple statements with meta_query or tax_query similar to:

add_filter('woocommerce_ordering_args', 'custom_woocommerce_ordering_args');

function custom_woocommerce_ordering_args( $args ) {
    $args = array(
    'post_type' => 'product',
    'meta_query' => array(
        array(
            'key' => 'pa_attribute',
            'value' => 'attribute_value',
            'compare' => '=',
        )
    )
    );
    $query = new WP_Query( $args );
}

Where attribute is the variable attribute I have set, and the attribute_value is the value I am searching for.

It seems to do nothing to the product query.

Thank you in advance!