The Visiting Artists Program resource guides contain upcoming speakers' biographies, articles, video and audio content, related publications in the Flaxman Library, and additional online resources. These guides may be used in the classroom in preparation for the event, research, or post-lecture discussion.
Guadalupe Maravilla: Tuesday, September 12, 6:00–7:30 p.m. CT
The Art Institute of Chicago, Fullerton Hall, 111 S. Michigan Ave.
This event will be live captioned by Communication Access Realtime Translation services.
Join us for a lecture by Guadalupe Maravilla followed by an audience Q&A.
Combining sculpture, painting, performative acts, and installation, Guadalupe Maravilla 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 has presented solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver; Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo; Socrates Sculpture Park, New York; P·P·O·W, New York; and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, among others. Maravilla's work has been included in soft and weak like water, the 14th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, South Korea; uMoya: The Sacred Return of Lost Things, the 12th Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool, UK; and Songs for Ritual and Remembrance, Arthur Ross Gallery, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Featuring a newly commissioned, immersive installation, Maravilla's solo exhibition, Guadalupe Maravilla: Mariposa Relámpago, is on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston’s Watershed through September 4.
Maravilla’s work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Olso, Norway; and the Brooklyn Museum, New York, 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.
Presented in partnership with SAIC's Wellness Center.
Portrait credit: Guadalupe Maravilla. Courtesy of Guadalupe Maravilla and P·P·O·W, New York. Photo: Emmanuel Sanchez Monsalve
Artist Website
Guadalupe Maravilla’s website
Gallery Representation
P·P·O·W Gallery
Guadalupe Maravilla Transforms a School Bus into an Immersive Installation for Sound-Based Healing
Grace Ebert | Colossal | May 25, 2023
Step inside Guadalupe Maravilla’s sculptures at the ICA Watershed and prepare to heal
Murray Whyte | Boston Globe | May 25, 2023
For Guadalupe Maravilla, optimism is the first medicine
Stephanie Bailey | Art Basel Stories | April 21, 2023
The Artist as Healer*
Patricia Leigh Brown | New York Times | April 7, 2022
*This is a library resource that requires ARTIC login
Guadalupe Maravilla
Susan Canning | Sculpture Magazine | February 10, 2022
The Healing Art of Harmonic Vibrations
Andrea K. Scott | New York Magazine | September 3, 2021
Guadalupe Maravilla on Devotional Paintings and Creating Micro Economies
Guadalupe Maravilla | Art in America | October 13, 2021
Guadalupe Maravilla by Janine Antoni
Janine Antoni | Bomb Magazine | January 5, 2021
Guadalupe Maravilla: Portals by 
Stories of Resistance by Guadalupe Maravilla: Mariposa Relámpago at ICA Watershed
This exhibition May 25 – September 4, 2023 includes a newly commissioned work for the ICA Watershed exhibition titled Mariposa Relámpago (Lightning Butterfly), which is part of the artist’s Disease Thrower series—sculptures that incorporate natural materials, handmade objects, and items collected by the artist while retracing his migratory route to become shrines and healing instruments.
ICA Boston audio guide
Guadalupe Maravilla: Purring Monsters with Mirrors on Their Backs at MCA Denver
Maravilla presented new and recent work including a Retablo painting, a site-specific Tripa Chuca mural, and three Disease Throwers sculptures, one of which was specially commissioned for the exhibition (June 3 – August 28, 2022).
Guadalupe Maravilla: Tierra Blanca Joven at the Brooklyn Museum
Drawing on the artist’s personal story of migration, illness, and recovery, Guadalupe Maravilla: Tierra Blanca Joven (April 8 – September 18, 2022) centers the need for care and healing, particularly for the undocumented and cancer communities of which Guadalupe Maravilla is a part.
Visiting Artists Program Lecture Recordings from the Archive
SAIC Visiting Artists Program video and audio lecture recordings (1977–present.) Available with SAIC login credentials.
SAIC Digital Collections: Visiting Artists Program
SAIC Visiting Artists Program publicity archive and audio recordings (1977–98).
