Guadalupe Maravilla
The 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, In Minor Keys by Koyo Kouoh, will be held at the Giardini, the Arsenale and in various locations around Venice. After the premature passing of Koyo Kouoh in May 2025, with the full support of her family, La Biennale di Venezia decided to carry out her exhibition with the purpose of preserving, enhancing and widely disseminating her ideas and the work she pursued with such dedication to the very end.
The 110 invited participants of this exhibition – among them, individual artists, collaborative duos, collectives, and artist-led organisations – hail from many geographies and regions selected by Koyo with particular attention to resonances, affinity, and and possible convergences between practices, even when far apart. In looking to artists working in Salvador, Dakar, San Juan, Beirut, Paris, or Nashville, for example, Koyo sought to envision how their ingenuity, breadth of material experimentation, and visionary ideas bear connections to other artists and movements in simultaneity. In this spirit, In Minor Keys expands upon Koyo’s relational geography of encounters with artists over her lifetime.
Guadalupe Maravilla
El Brujo Disease Thrower, 2024
steel gong, cotton, glue mixture, plastic, loofah, oil on tin, and objects collected from a ritual of retracing the artist's original migration route
100 x 80 x 60 ins.
254 x 203.2 x 152.4 cm
Combining sculpture, painting, performative acts, Maravilla is known for his autobiographical practice, 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.
Responding to the United States’s shifting political climate, Maravilla’s ICE Age Disease Throwers, 2026, harness the healing potential of his acclaimed series of large-scale sculptures, known as Disease Throwers, to offer an antidote to society’s pervasive phobias surrounding migration. Inspired by the Acapulco chairs he found comfort in as a child growing up in El Salvador, these hand-woven and richly ornamented works incorporate an array of animistic objects specifically selected by the artist. Standing over seven feet tall, these sculptures serve as a vibrant testament to perseverance and humanity amidst uncertainty and fear.
Guadalupe 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; 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. In 2023, Guadalupe Maravilla: Mariposa Relámpago, a solo exhibition featuring a newly commissioned immersive installation debuted at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston’s Watershed, before touring to Ballroom Marfa, Marfa, TX, and the Contemporary Austin, Austin, TX. Maravilla presented his second solo exhibition at P·P·O·W, Si no sanas hoy, sanarás mañana, in 2024. His work is currently featured in group exhibitions at Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, NY, and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA, in addition to a two-person exhibition with Emery Blagdon (1907–1986) at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI.
Guadalupe Maravilla
ICE Age Disease Thrower #2, 2025
steel gong, cotton, glue mixture, plastic, and objects collected from a ritual of retracing the artist's original migration route
100 x 80 x 60 ins.
254 x 203.2 x 152.4 cm
Guadalupe Maravilla
ICE Age Disease Thrower #3, 2025
steel gong, cotton, glue mixture, plastic, and objects collected from a ritual of retracing the artist's original migration route
100 x 80 x 60 ins.
254 x 203.2 x 152.4 cm
Guadalupe Maravilla
ICE Age Disease Thrower #4, 2025
steel gong, cotton, glue mixture, plastic, and objects collected from a ritual of retracing the artist's original migration route
100 x 80 x 60 ins.
254 x 203.2 x 152.4 cm
"The Biennale, at its best, makes the world feel both larger and more intimate. This edition did exactly that," shares Deviina Dalmia.
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