Finite Bodies In Infinite Time

… human movement  and presence in the landscape manifests itself through the restless effort to pin down a sense of the place, Edison Peñafiel is more interested in the literal movement of bodies through space. His complex installation of video projections  and collaged sound references recurrent patterns of human migrations. Looped in an endless procession, absurd, yet highly sympathetic characters trudge across an animated landscape. The terrain slowly shifts between grassland, ocean, desert, and mountain range, only for the travelers to appear back where they started again, looping back on an eternal journey to nowhere. Though Peñafiel’s masked characters continually traverse the landscapes they encounter, they leave no visible index of their passage, and as such, they seem doomed to repeat themselves again and again. At the same time, the identity of the characters remains temporally and culturally ambiguous—some seem without gender or without age. Papier-mâché masks primarily from artisans in Peñafiel’s native Ecuador, and unspecific costuming transform them into archetypal representatives of any diasporic population. The first wave of immigrants charts the path for the next, whose journey in reality might take a different shape, but the obstacles are largely the same. Though the characters rarely interact with each other, they seem to inherent some kind of spatial knowledge from their predecessors. There are no tentative steps—no one hesitates as solid ground transforms into water. Undoubtedly their bodies reveal their exhaustion, but each one—stooped old women and pigtailed children alike—drives onward relentlessly. 

Peñafiel’s installation occupies a room in 100W once used for secret rites and performances by the Independent Order of the Odd Fellows, including reenactments of Old Testament stories and the Royal Purple Degree—a highly theatrical ritual designed to gently shepherd blindfolded initiates through an elaborate mock pilgrimage to a High Priest, metaphorically representing their triumphant passage through the “journey of life.” Great pains are taken by the Order, to assure that their candidates appear triumphant and remain safe during the entire ritual, despite loaded warnings of dire troubles ahead. The pilgrims in the Royal Purple Degree, however, always complete their journey, victorious over vice and conveniently protected from the perils natural world. Peñafiel’s travelers have no oak tree of hospitality or “bright rainbow of promise” to remind them of their “covenant-keeping Father.” Though there are no provisions against rough roads or annoyingly suspended rushes on their journey, Peñafiel’s travelers appear to walk on water. 

Excerpt from exhibition essay by Allison Klion for Reenactments of a Perpetual Cycle exhibition.

Land Escape is a multimedia installation produced during an artist residency at 100W Corsicana in Corsicana, TX with funds provided in part by the Navarro Council of the Arts and 100W Corsicana. It debuted in 2019 as part of Reenactments of a Perpetual Cycle, a collaborative exhibition between artists Rachel Wolfson Smith and Edison Peñafiel. 

Exibition Essay: Finite Bodies in Infinite Times by Allison Klion