Guadalupe Maravilla (born in 1976 in San Salvador, El Salvador) lives and works in New York, USA. Through a wide range of media, Guadalupe Maravilla’s work delves into personal experience of migration and illness. By tracing his journey from El Salvador to the United States and his battle with cancer, the artist transforms shared narratives of trauma into affirmations of resilience. His sculptures, paintings, performances and videos draw upon a symbolic cosmology connecting his own story to ancient indigenous practices. Maravilla approaches care as a political act, particularly in the context of healing intergenerational and migration-related trauma. He regularly activates his works through performances and “sound baths” : meditative experiences in which participants are “bathed” in sound frequencies designed to heal. In 2024, he presented his solo show Armonía de la Esfera at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University in Ithaca, as well as Mariposa Relámpago at the Contemporary in Austin, after exhibiting this project at Ballroom Marfa (Marfa, 2023) and ICA Boston Watershed (Boston, 2023). In 2023, he unveiled La Alegría del Fuego at galerie mor charpentier in Paris. He takes part in major group shows as well, including the Malta Biennale (2024), the 35th São Paulo Biennial, the 12th Liverpool Biennial, the 14th Gwangju Biennale (2023), and Drum Listens to Heart at the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco. He is represented by the P.P.O.W. Gallery (New York) and the mor charpentier gallery (Paris). Image : Guadalupe Maravilla, 2023, Photo © Makenzie Goodman |
