Creative Time has commissioned artist Guadalupe Maravilla to make a major installation in the Synod Hall of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York’s Morningside Heights neighborhood. Presented in collaboration with the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center, Maravilla’s Consejos de las Estrellas will be on view from December 17, 2026, to February 7, 2027.
As with past works by the artist, Consejos de las Estrellas will take the form a sculptural installation that is also “conceived as a sanctuary space—a place for gathering, reflection and respite during a season that can be both celebratory and vulnerable,” per a release.
“Both in the way he approaches his work and moves through the world, Guadalupe Maravilla embodies a commitment to care and creates the conditions for healing as an offering to all,” Creative Time director Jean Cooney said in a statement. “Consejos de las Estrellas is a beautiful and timely coalescence of Maravilla’s practice, a choreography of his visual work across mediums, his profoundly moving work as a sound healer, and his deep commitment to community.”
The project will bring together nearly 100 sculptures and textile works, as well as Maravilla’s traveling school bus–cum–artwork Mariposa Relámpago, which he transported from Mexico to Boston for an exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, and has since brought to Austin and Marfa, Texas.
During the run of the exhibition, Maravilla will activate the commission via weekly sound baths, an essential component of his practice, which looks at the intersections between art and healing. Maravilla’s singular approach connects to his own biography both as an unaccompanied minor who fled San Salvador in the 1980s during El Salvador’s civil war and as an adult with cancer, which he sees as connected traumas.
“For my project with Creative Time, I’m creating a sculptural installation that will serve as a healing instrument and a place to find warmth and belonging when the holidays deepen the feeling of absence, whether from grief, illness, or separation from family because of immigration status or other circumstances. It’s a place to come in from the cold, connect with others, and feel supported,” Maravilla said in a statement.
St. John the Divine will also serve as a site for mutual aid, where food, clothing, and toys will be gathered via donations and redistributed via partnerships with local community organizations.
“For more than 130 years, our Cathedral has served as a house of worship, sanctuary, and center of intellectual light for all people,” Laura Bosley, the cathedral’s executive director for programming, said in a statement. “Consejos de las Estrellas beautifully embodies that mission, creating space for meaningful conversation, reflection, and unity at an increasingly tumultuous moment in our country. It affirms the Cathedral’s commitment to community and reminds us that collective healing has the power to strengthen one’s belief systems and open the door to new beginnings.”
–Maximilíano Durón