Guadalupe Maravilla
Guadalupe Maravilla
Disease Thrower #16, 2021
gong, steel, wood, cotton, glue mixture, plastic, loofah, and objects collected from a ritual of retracing the artist's original migration route
98 x 96 x 52 ins.
248.9 x 243.8 x 132.1 cm
Several Eternities in a Day: Form in the Age of Living Materials features twenty-two artists from North, Central, and South America who embrace the unpredictable nature of living materials. These artists use materials such as avocado, cacao, achiote, cochineal, stone, clay, and natural dyes to create large-scale installations, paintings, works on paper, and mixed-media sculpture. Each of these materials is alive—they evolve, decay, drip, crumble, and evaporate. They are rooted in the spirit, memory, and knowledge of Brown and Indigenous worlds. The exhibition considers ideas around materials as records of the living and repositories of cosmic memory, organic decay and transformation.
Guadalupe Maravilla
Bee Sting Retablo, 2024
oil on tin, cotton and glue mixture on wood
54 x 38 ins.
137.2 x 96.5 cm
Combining sculpture, painting, performative acts, and installation, Guadalupe Maravilla (b. 1976) grounds his transdisciplinary practice in activism and healing. Engaging a wide variety of visual cultures, Maravilla’s work is autobiographical, referencing his unaccompanied migration to the United States due to the Salvadoran Civil War. Across all media, Maravilla explores how the systemic abuse of immigrants physically manifests in the body, reflecting on his own battle with cancer. Maravilla 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; Tate, London, UK; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; and National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, among others. 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; REDCAT, Los Angeles, CA; and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL, 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 before touring to Ballroom Marfa, Marfa, TX, November 3, 2023 - March 30, 2024, and the Contemporary Austin, Austin, TX, April 4 - November 4, 2024. Maravilla presented his second solo exhibition at P·P·O·W, Si no sanas hoy, sanarás mañana, in Spring 2024. His work is currently featured group exhibitions at Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, NY, and will be in a two-person exhibition with Emery Blagdon (1907–1986) at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI, in 2026. Maravilla has been invited to the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia by Koyo Kouoh, opening May 9.
Guadalupe Maravilla
Cloud Retablo, 2024
oil on tin, cotton and glue mixture on wood
56 x 39 ins.
142.2 x 99.1 cm
Guadalupe Maravilla
Disease Thrower #12122012, 2022
gong, steel, wood, cotton, glue mixture, plastic, loofah, and objects collected from a ritual of retracing the artist's original migration route
118 x 123 x 64 ins.
299.7 x 312.4 x 162.6 cm
Guadalupe Maravilla
Gallo Retablo, 2024
oil on tin, cotton and glue mixture on wood
65 x 40 ins.
165.1 x 101.6 cm
Maravilla’s intricate sound sculptures, named Disease Throwers, resonate as instruments of healing for spiritual and physical hurt.
Our editors on the exhibitions they’re looking forward to around the world this month, from Los Angeles to Seoul.