a detail is not a fragment by Paola Fernanda
Opening reception: Thursday, June 12th, 6-8PM
Thursday, June 12th – Tuesday, August 5th, 2025
Monday – Friday, 2–6pm
New York, NY – Penumbra Foundation is pleased to present a detail is not a fragment, a solo exhibition by Paola Fernanda, a Colombian visual artist and experimental filmmaker based in Finland. A public reception is scheduled for June 12th, 2025, from 6 PM to 8 PM.
a detail is not a fragment presents three 16mm experimental short films—Trenzando futuro (Braiding Future); Pelogramas (Hairgrams); and Sín título, autorretrato (Untitled, self-portrait)—as both 16mm projection loops and contact printed photographs.
Paola Fernanda’s films use intimate, personal and collective experiences to reflect on identity, cultural displacement, family and the body as a site of memory.
According to the artist, the construction of her images come fully from process. “My hair … is a timeline that I have kept since I left Colombia,” she says. “Although hair is not a living object, it grows similarly to plants and carries infinite memories that can serve to attribute life to it. Hair has a place in memorial, ritual, and magic, and it has an ambiguous relationship to the rest of the human body. Pelogramas was made without a camera and as a result, the record is a continuum without the intervals between frames.”
Paola’s images invite viewers to observe the materialization of her connections, allowing us to contemplate, without obstacles, that the work does not project an anchor to a single way of looking or a prescription to one possible translation of her notions of mobility, women’s roles and standings, or the perceptions of the individual within an “alien” community.
The exhibition will run through August 5th, 2025.
About the artist:
Paola Fernanda is a Colombian visual artist and experimental filmmaker based in Finland. Her work explores intergenerational memory, feminist narratives, and embodied archives, drawing on personal and collective experiences to reflect on identity, cultural displacement, and the body as a site of memory. She holds a BA and MA from The University of the Arts, Helsinki and a BA in Visual Arts from Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá, Colombia. Her work has been exhibited in numerous venues, including: Governors Island, New York City (2023); CICA Museum, South Korea (2022); DocLisboa International Film Festival, Portugal (2023); Oodi Helsinki Central Library (2023); and Cultural Centre Gabriel García Márquez, Bogotá (2022). She has upcoming exhibitions at: Photographic Gallery Hippolyte, Helsinki (October, 2025); Kuva Tila, Research Pavilion, Finland (December, 2025) and Luckan Gallery, Helsinki, Finland (March, 2026). Paola has recently participated in residencies at Liaison for Independent Filmmakers, Canada (2024/5); Saari Residence, Finland (2023); and Residency Unlimited, New York (2023), supported by The Finnish Cultural Institute. paolafernanda.com
Acknowledgments
Penumbra's Exhibition Space is supported in part by the Joy of Giving Something.
The Finnish Cultural Foundation, Finnish Cultural Institute in New York City, and Frame Contemporary Art Finland support the exhibition. Part of this exhibition's development process took place at the residency program at LIFT, a Liaison of Independent Filmmakers in Toronto, between October 2024 and March 2025.
