PENUMBRA WORKSPACE PROGRAM | RESIDENT | 2026
avion Pearce
Image © Avion Pearce. Courtesy of the artist.
“‘In the Hours Between Dawn’ is a photographic series I have been working on since 2018. The title comes from a line in Audre Lorde’s poem ‘A Litany for Survival’, in which Lorde describes living with fear in a world that has not ensured one’s survival, while still imagining the possibility of something better. The work draws from that tension, between vulnerability and hope, and attempts to visualize the fragile spaces where survival, intimacy, and imagination meet.”
Avion Pearce is an artist born in Brooklyn, New York and currently based in New Haven, Connecticut. Their photographic practice is grounded in the belief that images shape the ways cultural and historical narratives are remembered, obscured, and reimagined. As a first generation American raised within a family where storytelling was central, Pearce developed an early fascination with gaps left in their family history by missing photographs, and photographs that were never made. Ghosts known only through mystical, humorous and painfully shared verbal accounts. These absences became a generative force within their work, guiding a practice that moves between documentation and invention as a way to reconstruct personal and collective histories. Pearce received an MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2024 and studied Photography at Parsons School of Design. Their solo exhibition In the Hours Between Dawn was presented at Baxter Street Camera Club in New York in 2024. Pearce’s work has been exhibited at venues including the Aperture Foundation at the Armory Show, the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA), Anonymous Gallery, Ryan Lee Gallery, and Webber Gallery. They are the recipient of the 2024 Aperture Portfolio Prize and a 2022 NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship in Photography. Pearce has participated in residencies including the Center for Photography Woodstock Artist-in-Residence program. Their work has been featured in Aperture Magazine, PhotoVogue, The Cut, and the British Journal of Photography.
SPONSORS
This program is supported by The Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation, The Joy of Giving Something, the Ruth Foundation for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, public funds from New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in Partnership with the City Council, and the Lawrence Foundation.
