Sunrise-based artist Edison Peñafiel presents multimedia-based work at varying scales of presentation, and, at this moment, there are opportunities to experience the poetic humanity deeply embedded in his work.
The political and economic instability of Ecuador caused Peñafiel and his family to migrate to the United States in 2002. Since he graduated from Florida International University’s Fine Arts Program in 2016, his work has centered on socio-political conflicts including migration, labor, and surveillance.
Now, at the Coral Springs Museum of Art, Peñafiel contributes “Barrio Alto,” a series he began in 2012 and now revisits in 2024. The title claims itself as either an affluent neighborhood or a low-income housing district.
“The project initially reflected my childhood memories of playing with boxes from my family’s pharmacy in Ecuador,” says Peñafiel. Protest music also took a major influence in this series, he says. In this case, it’s Victor Jara’s “Las Casitas de Barrio Alto,” a protest song and Spanish cover of ‘Little Boxes’ by Malvina Raynolds.
Peñafiel begins by constructing cardboard houses from three-foot square to six-foot square installations. The variation of sizes allows the artist to manipulate the depth and create optical illusions. The final output of the project is a series of monochromatic photographs resembling an isolated barrio, or neighborhood. The images are printed in a square format and presented as a grid. The presentation moves from right to left but can be read as an endless cycle: construction and deconstruction.
There’s a statement to be made using cardboard. The houses reflect the cheaper materials used on the rapidly growing apartment towers popping up throughout South Florida, according to Peñafiel.
“Barrio Alto” is part of a larger socio-politically themed exhibition revolving around class structures and migration.
Peñafiel proposed to Juliana Forero, Ph.D., the arts and culture programs manager at the Coral Springs museum individual projects by Mitzi Falcón, Amanda Linares, and himself to reveal the similarities and universalness communicated in their different bodies of work.
Peñafiel says, “The show focuses on architecture, using concrete and the facade as central themes. These elements serve as metaphors for mirages, intimacy, identity, societal structures, deconstruction, politics, persecution, propaganda, history, and memory.”
Falcón’s “Sementerxs” delivers perspectives of LGBTQ+ construction workers in Mexico City through photography and found materials. Falcon’s portraits are direct and evoke femininity, strength, and power. The workers in the images have migrated from Veracruz to find work in a male-dominated society.
Linares’s “Dialogues Across Walls” uses concrete to reflect the Cuban government and its fragility. The artist looks at domestic spaces that are typically unnoticed. Linares makes tiles with wood, clay, and concrete to connect the interior and exterior of a house. The Coral Springs Museum, which was initially envisioned as a recreation and community center, has an open floor plan with segmented rooms around the perimeter. Linares’s work is installed in the segmented rooms along the northwest side of the gallery. The positioning of her pieces cleverly offers a personal space and a more intimate reading of the works.
Construction is a connecting theme between each project. It is exemplified in the materials or intentions issued by the artists. Concrete — a thick, gelatinous liquid mixture of broken stones, cement, and water that becomes molded and hardened, is preferred for low-income housing structures, particularly in extreme-weather environments. The very term “concrete” suggests a solid sensibility, yet in these works, concrete is a component to reveal broken structural systems: construction and deconstruction.
The exhibition is curated by Forero with credit to Daniel Listwan, museum operations administrator, for much of the exhibition design. For this exhibition, Forero says she needed “a mental and visual reset and wanted to take advantage of the negative space.” Each exhibition stands independently in the open space, but subtle methods insinuate a collective spirit. For example, artist wall labels are made from laser-cut sheetrock and directly mounted with drywall screws to underscore impermanence.
Peñafiel had initially imagined additional artists so perhaps the project’s scope will be re-presented in different contexts in the future.
In the meantime, his immersive 12-channel video installation, “MARE MAGNVM: A Floridian Odyssey / Una Odisea Florida,” is also on view at the USF Contemporary Art Museum in St. Petersburg. Peñafiel stages an immersive environment to pull visitors into an open space to stand alongside a grander scale of migratory characters. The layering of projections, music, and lighting enhances a theatricality consisting of a treacherous journey embarked upon by migrants. Each figure appears masked, simultaneously anonymous, individualized, and part of a collective of people in an unstable oceanic setting. The installation was shown at MAD Arts in Dania Beach during IGNITE Broward in 2022, where fully integrated video mapping technology was utilized.
“He is an artist that I would love to work with again. I’ve seen what he can do and the diversity of forms (of which he works with).” says Forero. “The work is social and political, not just aesthetic, and there are a lot of concepts. He’s at that level that he will find the medium to say what he needs to say,” says Forero.
IF YOU GO
WHAT: “Barrio Alto, Sementerxs, Dialogues Across Walls: Edison Peñafiel, Mitzi Falcón, and Amanda Linares”
WHERE: Coral Springs Museum of Art, 2855 Coral Springs Drive, Coral Springs
WHEN: On view through Saturday, Oct. 5. Public hours are 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and Sunday closed. Monday is by appointment.
TICKETS: Free
INFORMATION: Call (954) 340-5000 or
http://coralspringsmuseum.org
