Miami Art Week Meet the Artist Party co-hosted with MAD Arts

Locust Projects is proud to present The Mare Magnvm Cosmology, an ambitious two-chapter presentation by Ecuadorian-born, Miami-based artist Edison Peñafiel. The Mare Magnvm Cosmology unfolds across two chapters. Chapter One, a major revisioning of Peñafiel's evolving work MARE MAGNVM, debuts in November 2026 during Locust Projects' Annual Benefit Dinner and is the sole project featured during Miami Art Week. Expanding Penafiel's cosmology, Chapter Two, De Profundis Clamavi ad Astra (From the Depths I Cried Out to the Stars) is a major new commission supported with a major grant by VIA Art Fund. It will open later at Locust Projects in 2027, culminating in one of the organization's largest presentations of a single artist's work in its 28 years as Miami's longest-running alternative art space.

Peñafiel's cosmology stages migration as movement between worlds—an immersive video, sound, and textile universe. First realized by the artist in 2021, MARE MAGNVM, has been unfolding and continuously evolving and varying with each space it has inhabited. It will be presented at Locust Projects at an unprecedented scale and concept for its Miami premiere. The work depicts a stylized, monochromatic sea populated by fourteen boats carrying eighty-one figures caught in a perpetual loop. Every thirty minutes, the characters arrive back where they began. Their vessels — constructed of found objects including wood, oil drums, and tires — evoke real scenes of human migration across bodies of water, both contemporary and historical. Faces are hidden behind papier-mâché masks typical of Peñafiel's native Ecuador; belonging to no single region or nationality, the figures become everywoman and everyman.

MARE MAGNVM, first realized in 2021, will be presented at Locust Projects at a new scale for its Miami premiere as Chapter One. The work depicts a stylized, monochromatic sea populated by fourteen boats carrying eighty-one figures caught in a perpetual loop. Every thirty minutes, the characters arrive back where they began. Their vessels — constructed of found objects including wood, oil drums, and tires — evoke real scenes of human migration across bodies of water, both contemporary and historical. Faces are hidden behind papier-mâché masks typical of Peñafiel's native Ecuador; belonging to no single region or nationality, the figures become everywoman and everyman.

De Profundis Clamavi ad Astra (From the Depths I Cried Out to the Stars), the second chapter, will premiere at Locust Projects in 2027. Where MARE MAGNVM crosses the surface of the sea, De Profundis descends beneath it—an immersive multi-channel environment in which figures fall through the depths toward transformation physically and spiritually and the stars.