Amanda Kelly

Guadalupe Maravilla’s ‘Sound BotÁnica’

Guadalupe Maravilla’s first solo exhibition in Europe, Sound Botánica, opens at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter in March 2022.

The exhibition forms part of the Lise Wilhelmsen Art Award 2021, which presents 100,000 USD in prize money to a distinguished artist whose work will inspire and motivate future generations to active participation and social responsibility. Presented bi-annually and intended to mark a significant milestone in an artist's career, it also features a dedicated exhibition and an acquisition budget. Guadalupe Maravilla is the second artist to receive the award, which was inaugurated in 2019 with Otobong Nkanga as its first recipient.

Curated by Caroline Ugelstad, the exhibition in Norway will present more than 30 works by Guadalupe Maravilla, bringing together new commissions with pieces from four major series from Maravilla’s body of work: Tripa Chuca; Embroideries; Disease Throwers; and Retablos. These include sound baths, videos, sculptures, installations and performances that speak to the artist's autobiography, his personal mythology and his perspectives on colonial history.

Guadelupe Maravilla was born in El Salvador in 1976. When he was just eight years old, he migrated to the United States alone, a child refugee fleeing the country’s brutal civil war. Years later, at the age of 35, he was diagnosed with colon cancer. The artist’s interdisciplinary practice often refers to these experiences of exile and illness, migration and healing, identity, and displacement. Essentially autobiographical, his work also draws upon pre-Columbian mythologies, Indigenous traditions, collective memory, geopolitical history, and material culture.