On view in the Alumni Gallery and at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts from November 14, 2026 – February 6, 2027, Heidie Mojica '18 presents Hogar pa’ Jugar (A Home for Play), a body of photographic work in which the studio serves as both stage and shelter. Through subtly manipulated self-portraits and images of collaborators, Mojica proposes a vision of home not as a fixed place but as something made.
Artist Statement
Mojica’s practice engages the body through performance within a simulated reality she constructs in the studio. Through repetitive gestures and exercises that explore precarity, imbalance and the interplay between bodies, she creates images that evoke the struggle between autonomy and connection. Drawing on familial trauma, these gestures address themes of control, impracticality and loss. Using studio techniques and subverted Photoshop manipulations, Mojica transforms the environment, creating illusions that challenge viewers to reconsider the boundaries of this perceived reality. In doing so, she also invites dialogue about the language of photography itself, asking where the medium’s limits lie and how we choose to navigate them.
About the Artist
Heidie Mojica Machuca (b. 1995, Rio Piedras, PR) is a visual artist and photographer based in Philadelphia. She earned her BFA from Moore College of Art & Design, where she received the Angela Murdoch Award for Innovative Photography. She has served as a teaching artist with TILT Institute for the Contemporary Image and Norris Square Community Alliance. Her artistic practice and collaborations have included projects with The Barnes Foundation, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Fleisher/Ollman Gallery, the Mütter Museum, Ulises Books and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Her work has been exhibited throughout Philadelphia at Tyler School of Art, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Moore College of Art & Design and PAFA, and published in Space on Space magazine. Her first solo exhibition, “Tremendo Riesgo,” was presented by Tiger Strikes Asteroid in Brooklyn and later shown at Black Brick Project the following year.
Image: Heidie Mojica, Torre 19 (block 2 of 57), 2026. Courtesy of the artist.
