These Corners Could be Other Corners 

 

PNP Summer AIR Exhibition 
Opens October 3rd, 6pm – 9pm
On view October 3rd – 26th
Gallery Hours: Saturday, Sunday 2pm – 6pm

An exhibition by Idalia Vásquez-Achury

These Corners Could Be Other Corners is a reflection on edges, corners, intersections, limits, and borders. These are not empty geometries but also places of encounter. In West Central African traditions, corners can represent crossroads within a spiritual context. In Kongo cosmology, the crossroads mark the interaction between the world of the living and the world of the dead, a threshold where communication becomes possible. 

At the same time, spaces are actively constructed, shaped by impulses of definition, fixation, and control. Limits and borders are sites of both violence and possibility, not only physical boundaries but also metaphorical spaces. Opening intersections to new possibilities becomes central to this work. Like The Aleph, Jorge Luis Borges’s short story, it reveals the infinite at a single point, collapsing time and space into a single, simultaneous vision. Anyone who gazes into it can see everything in the universe from every angle at once. In this exhibition, the corner and the intersection each carry the potential to hold more than one world simultaneously, embodying both limit and possibility. 

Idalia Vasquez-Achury is a Colombian-born, Philadelphia-based lens-based media artist. Delving into artist books, installation and photography, her practice explores the state of permanent transition or perpetual becoming, as well as the ambiguity and fluidity inherent in contemporary diasporic experiences. Her multidisciplinary work encompasses photography, artist books, and large-scale photographic installations. Currently, Idalia teaches photography at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University and at Arcadia University, and she has previously taught at the Pennsylvania College of Art and Design in Lancaster, PA.

In 2023, Vasquez-Achury was the winner of the 97th Annual at The Print Center, Philadelphia, where she was awarded a solo exhibition. That same year, she received the Blake Bradford Fitler Club Artist in Residence Award. Her work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions at The Print Center, Fleisher Art Memorial, and Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia, PA; Scarab Club Gallery, Detroit, MI; 555 Gallery, Dearborn, MI; Photo Place Gallery, Middlebury, VT; and Casa Sin Fin, Bogotá, Colombia. Her works are part of the collections of The Forman Initiative and the Charles Library at Temple University, and have also been featured in Lenscratch and Don’t Take Pictures, among other publications.

Idalia earned an MFA in Photography from the Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University, and a BA from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Michigan, after transitioning from a career in graphic design.