Guadalupe Maravilla
‘Planeta Abuelx’ is a solo exhibition of new work by artist Guadalupe Maravilla drawing on ancestral, Indigenous, and ritual practices of healing. Maravilla’s sculptures are an accumulation of totemic forms, recycled and found materials, botanicals, Mesoamerican symbolism, and functional sound components.
The title, expanding the idea of “Mother Earth” into the intergenerational, gender neutral, and open-ended “Grandparent Planet,” points to Maravilla’s framing of intimate familial relationships and passage of time as crucial to the restorative process. The installation of works serves as an homage to our elders, not only as a vulnerable group disproportionally lost to illness including Covid-19, but also as keepers of curative ancestral knowledge passed down through generations.
Informed by personal experiences of migration and illness, Maravilla’s practice and his exhibition at Socrates invite the public to more broadly consider how we – as communities and individuals – begin rehabilitation and renewal from collective traumas, including the Covid-19 pandemic and continued white supremacist violence. Maravilla’s focus on mutual and holistic care are in harmony with Socrates as a waterfront park, a sheltered green space, and place of community.
Over the course of the Planeta Abuelx exhibition, Maravilla activated the projects on view through a series of public programs including community workshops and therapeutic sound baths. These programs were offered in accordance with Covid-19 safety protocols and responsive to changing conditions.
Installation View, Guadalupe Maravilla: Planeta Abuelx, Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens, NY. Image by Sara Morgan.
Installation View, Guadalupe Maravilla: Planeta Abuelx, Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens, NY.
Installation View, Guadalupe Maravilla: Planeta Abuelx, Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens, NY. Image by Sara Morgan.
Installation View, Guadalupe Maravilla: Planeta Abuelx, Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens, NY. Drone image by KMDECO Creative Solutions: Mark DiConzo.
Guadalupe Maravilla’s “Planeta Abuelx” at Socrates Sculpture Park provided a welcome respite for pandemic times. Offering a space for meditation, healing, and recovery, the project reflected Maravilla’s engagement with mutual aid and therapy, focusing on the ways that art can sustain, restore, and provide solace. A cancer survivor and immigrant who escaped El Salvador’s bloody civil war, Maravilla understands the nature of trauma. These experiences, along with childhood memories, rituals, and traditional medicine, form the basis of his practice and its recuperative and communal purpose.
After a tumultuous 2020 that involved the beginnings of a pandemic and worldwide upheaval, the art world began to slowly go back to a form of normal in 2021. Along with that shift came a number of developments that brought art-making in new and unexpected developments. There was the rise of a new medium, and there was the return of performance art. There were artworks that spoke to a continued reckoning with systemic racism, and there were powerful pieces that offered forms of healing in a time when illness was prevalent. There was no shortage of creativity on display. The list below, featuring 15 works that defined this year, attests to that.
At Socrates Sculpture Park, Guadalupe Maravilla transforms works of art into therapeutic instruments.
Who better to practice healing than the sick, who have likely experimented relentlessly, and who manage their own bodies every day? The El Salvador–born, New York–based artist Guadalupe Maravilla has channeled his experience with cancer and migration into a healing-focused practice.
In 1984, eight-year-old Guadalupe Maravilla left his family and joined a group of other children fleeing their homes in El Salvador. The Central American country was in the midst of a brutal civil war, a profoundly traumatic experience that’s left an indelible impact on the artist and one that guides his broad, multi-disciplinary practice to this day.
Though it’s tempting to hole up inside to escape the summer heat, meaningful art makes a sunny jaunt worth the trip. Crafted with the intention to provoke thought and help us catch our collective breath, temporary art installations by Sam Durant, Melvin Edwards, Mimi Lien, Guadalupe Maravilla and Sam Moyer installed across Manhattan and Queens this season are both grounding and impactful.
As part of a collaboration with Art21, hear news-making artists describe their inspirations in their own words.
These spaces nudge you toward unexpected art surprises and offer vistas of healing and history.
June is reopening month for New York City! With the weather warming up, the city has lots of outdoor art premiering in fun destinations to check out.
