"For Maravilla, the telling of a story is as important as the object that contains it"

–Carribean Fragoza

For his first solo exhibition in Los Angeles, Guadalupe Maravilla transforms REDCAT into an environment for healing and storytelling. Born in El Salvador, Maravilla fled the country at the age of eight as an unaccompanied minor to escape the violence of the twelve-year Salvadoran Civil War, reuniting with his family in the United States. As an adult, the artist survived cancer, a disease he believes resulted from the childhood traumas of war, migration, exile, and formerly living in the US undocumented. Throughout this new exhibition, Maravilla retraces his personal journey as a migrant while connecting it with the journeys of others, offering a site for ancestral healing and collective care.

Maravilla (b. 1976) received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts and his MFA from Hunter College in New York. His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX; and the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY, among others. He has received numerous awards and fellowships including a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, 2019; Soros Fellowship: Art Migration and Public Space, 2019; MAP Fund Grant, 2019; Franklin Furnace Fund, 2018; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship, 2018; Art Matters Fellowship, 2017; Creative Capital Grant, 2016; Joan Mitchell Emerging Artist Grant, 2016; and The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation Award 2003. He has presented solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, CO; Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo, Norway; Socrates Sculpture Park, New York, NY; P·P·O·W, New York, NY; and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL, among others. His work has been included in recent group exhibitions such as uMoya: The Sacred Return of Lost Things, Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool, UK; soft and weak like water, 14th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju Metropolitan City, South Korea; Drum Listens to Heart, Part III, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco, CA; Crip Time, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany; and Stories of Resistance, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, MO, among others. Guadalupe Maravilla: Mariposa Relámpago, a solo exhibition featuring a newly commissioned immersive installation at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston’s Watershed, was on view from May 25 - September 4, 2023. Now on a multi-venue tour across Texas, Mariposa Relámpago has been presented at Ballroom Marfa, November 3, 2023 - March 30, 2024, and the Contemporary Austin, April 4 - November 4, 2024. Maravilla held his second solo exhibition at P·P·O·W, Si no sanas hoy, sanarás mañana, in Spring 2024. His first solo exhibition in the UK, Piedras de Fuego (Fire Stones), opened in Fall 2024.