To watch the recorded art talk, click here.
Edison Peñafiel’s work focuses on video and immersive, site-specific, multimedia installations that create surreal echoes of our world. Informed by his own life, Peñafiel centers the migrant as a subject. While his early photography focuses on deconstruction and perception, absurdity, and politics, his shift towards multi-media installations has deepened his engagement with socio-economic and political themes. Peñafiel’s practice channels migrant narratives in order to transmit to the viewer the reality behind the experience of marginalization.
Peñafiel has presented his work at numerous venues including the Bass Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, the Orlando Museum of Art, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale, Sabrina Amrani Gallery, the Atchugarry Art Center, the Contemporary Art Center New Orleans, the McColl Center for Art + Innovation, the Centro de Arte Universidad Nacional de la Plata. Among his distinctions, he has been awarded a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Florida Prize in Contemporary Art, and the South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship in 2019, The Ellies Creator Award, and an Individual Artist Project Award from the State of Florida Division of Arts and Culture in 2021. Peñafiel currently lives and works in Miami, and his work is represented by Sabrina Amrani Gallery in Madrid, Spain.
To learn more about Edison’s work, click here.