Guadalupe Maravilla

Guadalupe Maravilla is an artist whose multidisciplinary practice centers on sculpture, sound, and communal healing. Disease Throwers are shrine-like sculptures that function as healing instruments. Created for this exhibition, this Disease Thrower is a metal hammock inspired by and fabricated from the artist's childhood hammock from El Salvador. Reimagined as a healing instrument, the hammock is filled with objects Maravilla collected while retracing, as an adult, the migratory route he first traveled at the age of eight while fleeing the Salvadoran Civil War. Over two and a half months, he journeyed unaccompanied through Mexico to reunite with his family in the United States.

During healing ceremonies, Maravilla activates the sculpture through sound, inviting participants to reconnect with their own capacity for healing through vibration, listening, and collective care. Surrounding the installation are five retablos that recount key moments from this journey.

These retablos draw on the tradition of the ex-voto: devotional paintings on tin created in gratitude for miracles, each accompanied by a written account. Maravilla writes the narratives himself, recalling episodes such as crossing the border at Tijuana, returning to El Salvador at 16, and visiting the volcano known as the "Lighthouse of the Pacific" for its near-daily eruptions. He develops each composition digitally before commissioning Daniel Vilchis and his father, Alfredo Vilchis, third- and fourth-generation retablo painters from Mexico City, to hand-paint each work. By commissioning these works, Maravilla supports traditional artisans and contributes to sustaining local craft economies.

Maravilla received a BFA from the School of Visual Arts and an MFA from Hunter College in New York. His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain; Tate, London; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C.; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Blanton Museum of Art, Austin; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., among others. He has presented solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn; Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver; Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo, Norway; Socrates Sculpture Park, New York; P·P·O·W, New York; REDCAT, Los Angeles; and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, among others.

Maravilla presented his second solo exhibition at P·P·O·W, Si no sanas hoy, sanarás mañana, in 2024. Guadalupe Maravilla: Mariposa Relámpago, a solo exhibition featuring a newly commissioned immersive installation, debuted at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston’s Watershed, in 2023 before touring to Ballroom Marfa in Marfa, Texas, and the Contemporary Austin in Austin. A reconfiguration of Mariposa Relámpago is on view now through January 2027 in a two-person exhibition with Emery Blagdon (1907-1986) at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Maravilla’s work is currently included in the group exhibitions Let Us Gather in a Flourishing Way at Buffalo AKG Art Museum in Buffalo, New York, and Several Eternities in a Day: Form in the Age of Living Materials at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. Works by Maravilla are on view in the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia by Koyo Kouoh, In Minor Keys, through November 22, 2026.