Walking into The star exploding in the body, an exhibition that pairs sculptures by Guadalupe Maravilla and Emery Blagdon to create an immersive installation, one encounters an atmosphere reserved for sacred spaces. Although Maravilla and Blagdon worked decades apart, both artists had personal experiences with cancer that spurred the development of similar practices.
In the mid-fifties, after many of his family members were diagnosed with cancer, Blagdon, who had no formal artistic training, began creating an installation of paintings, mobiles, and sculptures in an old wooden shed on his family’s Nebraska farm. He believed the environment, which he constructed from masking tape, wire, and tinfoil and termed “The Healing Machine,” possessed therapeutic properties by harnessing energy. He continued to add to the installation until his death from cancer in 1986. In the 1980s, Maravilla immigrated to the United States from El Salvador as an unaccompanied, undocumented minor. He lost his mother to cancer and was diagnosed with colon cancer at age thirty-six, which he believed was a result of the traumas he experienced as a migrant. During his cancer treatment, he connected with Indigenous healing practices, including sound baths, which led to the development of his “Disease Thrower” sculptures that pair gongs with selected objects related to his journey through Central America.
For this exhibition, Maravilla has integrated Blagdon’s work, normally housed in the Kohler’s Art Preserve for artist-built environments, with a reinstallation of his monumental 2023 sculpture Mariposa Relámpago [Lightning Butterfly], a school bus adorned with several gongs and hundreds of symbolic objects the artist collected or commissioned as he retraced his migration route from El Salavador. He made stops along the way to perform healing ceremonies with local residents. In this iteration, the sculpture is deconstructed into three segments to create a monumental temple that is the site for sound ceremonies for the public and the cancer community.’
Placed at the center of the room, the bus façade serves as a temple entrance and altar. The bumper is replaced by three metal steps, creating the base of a pyramidal form. Each holds a series of stone sculptures of corn, a reference to the centrality of the life-sustaining crop in Central American cultures. Maravilla designed the sculptures and hired artists in Mexico and El Salvador to carve them, reflecting the importance of communal practices to his artistic process. The stone sculptures are juxtaposed with a large collection of cutlery, which Maravilla purchased from a local craftsman during his travels. The silverware vibrates during sound baths when Maravilla activates them using tuning forks and the gongs.
On the roof of the bus, forming the apex of the pyramid, is a metal dragon holding a basket of eggs. The dragon was the first object Maravilla selected to be included in Mariposa. The dragon eggs, considered across many cultures to be a potent talisman, are made from white onyx, which contains healing properties including protection from negative energy, grounding during stress, and facilitating spiritual growth. At the dragon’s feet is a metal scarab beetle: a symbol of resurrection and regeneration. In some ancient cultures the bug was buried with the dead to ensure safe passage to the afterlife.
Visitors can move around the altar, viewing it from all angles before passing into the interior of the temple, formed by the side walls of the bus. The walls have been detached and positioned at a nearly a ninety-degree angle to create a deep V-shape that leads toward a central gong hanging on the back wall of the gallery. The left wall is adorned with two giant gongs and the right wall is adorned with an imposing stone serpent. Objects affixed to the roofline loosely resemble a classical pediment sculpture, especially the four galloping white horses, which bring to mind the famous horse heads on the east pediment of the Parthenon. In place of a traditional roof, Maravilla suspends a collection of Blagdon’s mobiles from a metal framework and lights them from above so that the silver foil and semi-translucent paper appear to shimmer and sparkle, offering a celestial connection.’’
Blagdon’s sculptures are also installed along the periphery of the gallery. Additional illuminated mobiles cast dramatic shadows of their geometric and lattice forms. Below them are flat copper wire and wood sculptures which evoke vintage circuit boards. Blagdon was concerned with the flow of energy and the function of magnetic properties as potential curative forces, but Maravilla recontextualizes these flat wood sculptures as a sound tool, stacking them on top of one another, and during performances, spurring them into reverberation with a tuning fork.
A collaborative creation of two artists with additive processes, The star exploding in the body is full of numerous small visual details, symbolic and sometimes mysterious forms that they collected or created. It is also an unconventional musical instrument. While Maravilla will conduct several live sound baths, the inaugural session was recorded and is continually replayed in the gallery. It’s an atonal but harmonized composition, like the sound of an orchestra tuning, and the vibrations are palpable. It’s not necessary to subscribe to Blagdon’s belief in healing energy in order to perceive the power of this sculptural environment to help us to connect to ourselves and to heal from illness, trauma, or the burdens of being human.