
“I'm a professor of performance. I'm a performance artist. I'm an object maker. And I'm an artist that's learned to heal himself.”
1. BIOGRAFÍA
Guadalupe Maravilla is a transdisciplinary visual artist, choreographer, and healer. At the age of eight, Maravilla was part of the first wave of unaccompanied, undocumented children to arrive at the United States border in the 1980s as a result of the Salvadoran Civil War. In 2016, Maravilla became a U.S. citizen and adopted the name Guadalupe Maravilla in solidarity with his undocumented father, who uses Maravilla as his last name. As an acknowledgment to his past, Maravilla grounds his practice in the historical and contemporary contexts belonging to undocumented communities and the cancer community. Combining pre-colonial Central American ancestry, personal mythology, and collaborative performative acts, Maravilla’s performances, objects, and drawings trace the history of his own displacement and that of others. Culling the entangled fictional and autobiographical genealogies of border crossing accounts, Maravilla nurtures collective narratives of trauma into celebrations of perseverance and humanity. Across all media, Maravilla explores how the systemic abuse of immigrants physically manifests in the body, reflecting on his own battle with cancer, which began in his gut. Maravilla’s large-scale sculptures, titled Disease Throwers, function as headdresses, instruments, and shrines through the incorporation of materials collected from sites across Central America, anatomical models, and sonic instruments such as conch shells and gongs. Described by Maravilla as “healing machines”, these Disease Throwers ultimately serve as symbols of renewal, generating therapeutic, vibrational sound. “Now that I’ve learned to heal myself,” Guadalupe Maravilla once said, “I have to teach others how to heal themselves.” This concern with healing and forms of care, shaped by Maravilla’s personal history, is the foundation for his explorations of sculpture, performance, and ritual.
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His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sof.a, Madrid; and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami. Additionally, he has performed and presented his work at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; Queens Museum, New York; The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York; El Museo del Barrio, New York; Museum of Art of El Salvador, San Salvador; X Central American Biennial, Costa Rica; New York; Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, New York; and the Drawing Center, New York, among others. In 2023, he participated in the 14th Gwangju Biennale; the 12th Liverpool Biennial; and the 35th Sao Paulo Biennial.
Awards and fellowships include the 2021 Joan Mitchell Fellowship; LatinX Fellowship 2021; Lise Wilhelmsen Art award 2021; Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship 2019; Soros Fellowship: Art Migration and Public Space 2019; Map fund 2019; Creative Capital Grant 2016; Franklin Furnace 2018; Joan Mitchell Emerging Artist Grant 2016; Art Matters Grant 2013; Art Matters Fellowship 2017; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship 2018; Dedalus Foundation Grant 2013 and The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation Award in 2003.
2. SELECCIÓN DE OBRAS
3. PROGRAMA EN LA GALERÍA
4. PROYECTOS INSTITUCIONALES
Redcat, 2025
Carnegie Mellon University, 2025
Talbot Rice, 2024
ICA Miami, 2023
Brooklyn NY, 2023
Bienal de São Paolo, 2023
Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, 2022
MCA Denver, 2022
ICA Miami, 2019
«Reacciono ante el mundo que me rodea. Reacciono ante mis propias experiencias, ya sea haber sobrevivido al cáncer, haber formado parte de la primera oleada de niños indocumentados que llegaron a este país sin acompañantes, la pandemia u otras cosas que han sucedido. Son desafíos muy difíciles con los que me he topado, pero también cosas muy positivas. Y recojo todo esto y lo convierto en nuevas obras. Creo mis propias microeconomías en torno a mi práctica».
“El sonido es realmente poderoso. Existe una forma universal de experimentar la sanación en sí misma, y es a través del sonido. Y todos lo sienten. Todos los seres vivos lo sienten. Las plantas lo sienten. Los animales lo sienten. Los bebés lo sienten. Creo que todos necesitamos sanar algo.”
5. VÍDEOS
2026
Biennale Arte 2026 – Guadalupe Maravilla
Venice Biennale
2025
Guadalupe Maravilla’s “Mariposa Relámpago»
Art21 «New York Close Up»
2025
In Dialogue: The Guggenheim Collection | Guadalupe Maravilla
Guggenheim Museum
2021
Guadalupe Maravilla & the Sound of Healing
Art21 «New York Close Up»
2019
Guadalupe Maravilla: A Spiritual Practice
Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami
2018
Guadalupe Maravilla, Requiem For My Border Crossing
Whitney Museum of American Art





















