Edison Peñafiel (b. 1985, Guayaquil, Ecuador) is a Miami-based interdisciplinary artist whose work centers on immersive installation and materially driven textile compositions. His practice investigates migration, systems of power, and collective memory through environments that combine video, sound, and architectural form. Alongside large-scale installations, he develops autonomous works that translate these spatial investigations into sculptural and textile-based compositions.

Peñafiel’s solo installation MARE MAGNVM, presented at the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum and Sabrina Amrani Gallery, Madrid, marked the first chapter of an ongoing trilogy exploring migration and myth. The second chapter, De Profundis Clamavi ad Astra, is currently in development with support from the VIA Art Fund and will be presented at Locust Projects, Miami.

His work has been presented at institutions including the Ford Foundation Gallery, New York (forthcoming); The Ringling Museum (Sarasota); the Mint Museum (Charlotte); the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans; the Orlando Museum of Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami; and The Bass Museum, Miami Beach. International exhibitions include BIENALSUR at MUNTREF Museo de la Inmigración and the Centro de Arte Universidad Nacional de La Plata (Argentina); the Trienal Poli/Gráfica de San Juan (Puerto Rico); Passerelle Centre d’Art Contemporain, Brest, France (forthcoming); and CA2M – Centro de Arte Contemporáneo 2 de Mayo (Madrid). He has participated in ARCO Madrid and Art Düsseldorf with Sabrina Amrani.

He is the recipient of the VIA Art Fund Artistic Production Grant, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Creative Research Grant, the Knight Arts Challenge Award, the Premio ARCO Comunidad de Madrid, and the South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship. His work is held in public collections including CA2M (Madrid), Oolite Arts (Miami), and Elsewhere Museum (North Carolina).

He has participated in residencies at MASS MoCA, Anderson Ranch, McColl Center for Art + Innovation, and the Watermill Center. Peñafiel is represented by Sabrina Amrani, Madrid, and Fredric Snitzer Gallery, Miami.

STATEMENT

Edison Peñafiel’s practice centers on the construction of immersive environments that examine how power, belief, and history are experienced at a bodily scale. Working with video, sound, sculpture, and architectural elements, he creates spatial narratives that viewers must enter and navigate, positioning perception itself as part of the work.

Rooted in personal and collective experiences of migration, his installations explore systems of control—ritual, labor, surveillance—and the ways they shape identity and memory over time. Influenced by German Expressionism and political spectacle, Peñafiel employs distortion, repetition, and atmosphere to destabilize orientation and challenge passive viewing.

His work often incorporates projections, found materials, and sound to evoke structures of authority and observation. These elements do not function as symbols alone, but as conditions that shape the viewer’s movement, attention, and sense of agency within the space. Meaning emerges through navigation, duration, and proximity.

Across projects such as MARE MAGNVM: A Floridian Odyssey and Ni Aquí, Ni Allá, Peñafiel constructs environments where the boundary between reality and illusion remains deliberately unstable. Rather than offering resolution, the work sustains tension—inviting viewers to confront how systems of power are internalized, inhabited, and reproduced.