Edison Peñafiel is a Miami-based artist whose work examines experiences about those on the underside of the world’s major conflicts: the migrant, the laborer, the surveilled. Clashing ideologies and the repetitive cycles of history produce the human catastrophes that his installation work speaks to. He draws the eye to the off angles that our world often intersects with, creating disturbing reflections of the realities we participate in and witness every day. These unnerving views break us out of the desensitized lull that an ongoing crisis creates.

Through visual references to German expressionism and the surveillance state, Peñafiel keeps the work inside a long-term discussion about the turning gears of modernity and the alienation it continues to produce. The hidden peril of these destructive cycles lends urgency to exploring the history of how we got here, how we perceive what’s going on, and the hard truths of those who must face the darkest parts of the present.