Guadalupe Maravilla

https://www.guadalupemaravilla.com/ // @guadelupe_maravilla

Combining sculpture, painting, performative acts, and installation, Guadalupe Maravilla (b. 1976) grounds his transdisciplinary practice in activism and healing. Engaging a wide variety of visual cultures, Maravilla’s work is autobiographical, referencing his unaccompanied, undocumented migration to the United States due to the Salvadoran Civil War. Across all media, Maravilla explores how the systemic abuse of immigrants physically manifests in the body, reflecting on his own battle with cancer.

Maravilla received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts and his MFA from Hunter College in New York. His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL; the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Olso, Norway; and the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY, among others. He has received numerous awards and fellowships including a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, 2019; Soros Fellowship: Art Migration and Public Space, 2019; MAP Fund Grant, 2019; Franklin Furnace Fund, 2018; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship, 2018; Art Matters Fellowship, 2017; Creative Capital Grant, 2016; Joan Mitchell Emerging Artist Grant, 2016; and The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation Award 2003.

He has presented solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, CO; Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo, Norway; Socrates Sculpture Park, New York, NY; P·P·O·W, New York, NY; and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL, among others. His work has been included in recent group exhibitions such as uMoya: The Sacred Return of Lost Things, Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool, UK; soft and weak like water, 14th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju Metropolitan City, South Korea; Drum Listens to Heart, Part III, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco, CA; Crip Time, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany; and Stories of Resistance, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, among others. Maravilla’s work is currently included in the 12th Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art: forms of the surrounding futures, Gothenburg, Sweden and the 35th Bienal De São Paulo: choreographies of the impossible, São Paulo, Brazil.

Originally presented at the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston’s Watershed, Guadalupe Maravilla: Mariposa Relámpago, Maravilla’s largest sculpture to date, will travel to venues across Texas through a partnership between Ballroom Marfa, The Contemporary Austin, and The Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston. The multi-year tour will begin with Ballroom Marfa from November 3, 2023, through March 30, 2024, and make its Austin appearance at the Betty and Edward Marcus Sculpture Park at Laguna Gloria on April 4, 2024. Following the presentation in Austin, Guadalupe Maravilla: Mariposa Relámpago will travel to The Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston in November 2024.