Ni Los Perros Que Jamás Me Olvidaron, Ni Los Caballos, Ni Los Abrazos Que Me Dan Mis Hermanos [Neither the dogs that never forgot me, nor the horses, nor the hugs from my siblings]

Coined in the South: 2024 is a juried biennial exhibition presented by the Young Affiliates of the Mint (YAMs) in collaboration with The Mint Museum. Bringing together emerging and mid-career artists living or working across the Southern United States, the exhibition highlights the region’s evolving cultural, social, and aesthetic landscapes.

Referencing both The Mint Museum’s origins as the first branch of the U.S. Mint and the act of invention itself, Coined in the South foregrounds artistic practices rooted in personal narrative, collective memory, and cultural history. The exhibition resists a singular visual language or thematic framework, instead embracing a wide range of media and approaches that reflect the complexity and diversity of contemporary Southern art.

For the 2024 edition, nearly 1,500 works were submitted for consideration. Forty-nine artists were selected by a distinguished jury composed of Marshall N. Price, PhD (Chief Curator, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University), Victoria Ramirez, PhD (Executive Director, Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts), and Stephanie J. Woods (Artist and Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Art, University of New Mexico).

Edison Peñafiel participated in Coined in the South: 2024 with three works from his ongoing series Ni Los Perros Que Jamás Me Olvidaron, Ni Los Caballos, Ni Los Abrazos Que Me Dan Mis Hermanos. Presented as part of the exhibition, these mixed-media works explore themes of migration, detention, memory, and collective trauma through layered fabric, print transfers, and stained raw canvas. Installed together, the works emphasize the power of accumulation and repetition, situating personal histories within broader structures of displacement and political violence.