Tiger Strikes Asteroid New York is pleased to announce its exhibition, Tremendo Riesgo, with Philadelphia-based artist Heidie Mojica.

Mojica’s practice draws on personal history, familial trauma and existential questions to create unique performative photographic works that embody larger social concerns around loss of identity, measures of success, simulated realities, dependance on tradition, and the struggle for autonomy.

Throughout the gallery, she has installed a disparate series of photo-based installations at varying heights and scales in a wide range of presentation styles. Some works rest gently on the floor, some slip out of their colored frames, some hang lightly from wires, one juts out of the wall, frame and backing exposed. Another image hangs dripping to the ground like backdrops in a photo studio echoing its limp, teetering subject. The works depict bodies (of the artist, friends and collaborators) in different poses and positions, falling, flailing, leaning, swinging alone or upon one another, struggling for balance, evoking a sense of precarity within and without their frames. The subjects, their images, and their environments are unstable.

At first glance the works appear as formal studies exploring variations of gesture, balance and figure in tandem with the possibilities of print and display, yet upon closer inspection there is a furtive play occurring between the literal space of documentation (of bodies twisting, contorting, jumping, lifting, leaning) and the manufactured image (use of studio lighting, obvious & hidden props, and Ai interventions). Within the images, faces are typically obscured with fabric or behind objects, and pre-production staging along with post-production Ai software are employed towards subtle, uncanny effects. Whole sections are flattened, re-colored, and re-modeled. Digital artifacts drift in and out of seemingly straight-forward images. In Esto No Tiene Madre / This is the Limit, a simulated bas-relief of a family appears like an apparition embedded into the work. The studio, a common setting throughout the show, suggests a site of absolute control, where the artist makes all decisions necessary to convey the intended message or sensation, but in every moment, formal and symbolic red herrings emerge and this assumption slips away. The viewer, like the maker, may struggle to keep things in order.  As Mojica states, “this exhibition is holding onto things that can’t stay as they are.”

The exhibition's title, translated as “Big Risk”, is taken from the artist’s memories of her mother:

“I was thinking of phrases, words my mom would say or call me. Often she'd say ‘tremenda’ (‘tremendous’, roughly) but always in a negative connotation – like ‘you're impossible, or a lot, too much.’”

This offers a poignant entry point for visitors, drawing a line from the artist's autobiographical past into these present day studio/gallery processes, folding and reconfiguring memories and projections into contemporary forms and images. Actions and gestures are repeated throughout the show, attempting novel constructions and dynamics, but generate evermore questions about whether or not we are really doing anything other than repeating ourselves. Constructing artworks, like constructing oneself, is a constant struggle, working from, with, and through the past, attempting to relinquish the burden of history (personal, cultural, economical), towards the creation of something significant and new. Big risks must be taken, but will they set us free?

About the Artist:

Heidie Mojica is a Philadelphia based visual artist and photographer. She received her BFA from Moore College of Art & Design where she was awarded the Angela Murdoch Award for Innovative Photography. Heidie has served as a teaching artist for TILT Institute for the Contemporary Image and Norris Square Community Alliance. She has been actively engaged with various local art organizations including The Barnes Foundation, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Fleisher/Ollman Gallery, Ulises Books, and The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Her work has been showcased in various Philadelphia galleries, including Tyler School of Art, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Moore College of Art & Design, PAFA, and has been featured in the independent print magazine Space on Space in Los Angeles.