My works trace the history of my displacement and merge with my precolonial Central American ancestry, personal mythology, and collaborative performative acts.

Guadalupe Maravilla is a transdisciplinary visual artist, choreographer, and healer. At the age of eight, he was part of the first wave of unaccompanied, undocumented children to arrive at the United States border in the 1980s because of the Salvadoran Civil War. In 2016, Maravilla became a US citizen and adopted the name Guadalupe Maravilla in solidarity with his undocumented father, who uses Maravilla as his last name. As an acknowledgment of his own migratory past, Maravilla grounds his practice in the historical and contemporary contexts of immigrant culture, particularly those belonging to Latinx communities. Maravilla’s performances, objects, and drawings trace the history of his own displacement and that of others. Across all media, the artist explores how the systemic abuse of immigrants physically manifests in the body and how to find healing from it.

Maravilla’s work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami. Additionally, he has performed and presented his work at the Whitney Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, Queens Museum, and The Bronx Museum of the Arts, among other institutions. Awards and fellowships include Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship 2019, Soros Arts Fellowship 2019, MAP fund 2019, Creative Capital Award 2016, Franklin Furnace grant 2018, Joan Mitchell Emerging Artist Grant 2016, Art Matters Fellowship 2017, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship 2018, Dedalus Foundation Grant 2013, and The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation Award 2003. Residencies include LMCC Workspace and The Drawing Center Open Sessions, New York; SOMA, Mexico City; and Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, ME.