Born in Ecuador, Edison Peñafiel migrated to the United States to leave the political and economic instability of his native country. His singular style integrates video and multimedia installation to create surreal echoes of our world, environments that translate experience.
Read MoreHis work centers the migrant as a subject, informed by his own life.His early photography focuses on deconstruction and perception, absurdity and politics. The use of a camera plays with evidence, fact, and their manipulation in media. Socio-economic and political themes deepened with his shift to multimedia installations. By introducing looping video projections, Peñafiel imitates the loops that make up our history and present. His visions show people trapped in behaviors of movement and labor, always being watched.
Later installations heighten the interaction between physical and virtual elements, creating worlds for the viewer to step into — worlds at the same time bizarre and familiar. These bring together the themes of his earlier works and the use of provocative imagery to evoke social realities while evolving into fully immersive experiences.
Peñafiel has presented his work in numerous large scale projects, site-specific installations, and immersive installations, appearing at the Bass Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, the Orlando Museum of Art, the Elsewhere Museum, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale. Notable awards include: the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Florida Prize in Contemporary Art, and the South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship.He is currently based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida - USA.
