Guadalupe Maravilla. Si no sanas hoy, sanarás mañana

About

Featuring new large-scale sculptures and retablos, the immersive installation harnesses a cosmology of potent symbols, objects and sounds as a means of addressing childhood experiences of war, displacement, illness, and healing.

The title of the exhibition translates to “If you don’t heal today, you will heal tomorrow” and is derived from a popular song “Sana Sana Colita de Rana” that adults in Latin America sing to children when they are experiencing pain, an injury, or need emotional care. In a series of new Retablos, a signature form of elaborate relief assemblages that feature devotional paintings, Maravilla reveals untold personal childhood stories of perseverance and humanity in the face of war and atrocity in El Salvador. In Bullet Sculpture Retablo, 2024, for example, Maravilla writes, “I remember making sculptures of the bullets I found in the street when I was 3-8 years old. The civil war in El Salvador was a war of brother against brother, sister against sister. Bless the healing forces that protected us.” 

Maravilla’s autobiographical work tells the story of his unaccompanied, undocumented migration to the United States at the age of eight. Across all media, Maravilla explores how the systemic abuse migrants experience physically manifests in the body; his own battle with colon cancer is linked to generational trauma and the impact of his own migration. Maravilla discovered sound therapy during his radiation treatments and subsequently became a healer himself. His celebrated series of large-scale sculptures, titled Disease Throwers, are artworks which the artist activates around the world in healing ceremonies.