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[SIDE CONVERSATIONS] JUAN MANUEL ADLAPA MUNOZ: Hello, and good evening. Welcome. We'll go ahead and get started. Welcome, everyone.
My name is Dr. Juan Manuel Adlapa Muñoz. I'm a Mellon postdoctoral fellow in the Society for the Humanities, and an incoming professor in the Department of Performing and Media Arts here in July. I'm really excited.
I can't emphasize enough-- excited-- about being here today with all of you, and with Guadalupe Maravilla. This artist talk is the first in an ongoing series with the campus-wide Migrations Global Grand Challenge, part of Global Cornell, with support from the Mellon Foundation's Just Futures Initiative. The Migrations Initiative studies global migration for all living things through an interdisciplinary multi-species lens with a special focus on themes of racism, dispossession, and migration.
Today, I'm going to start with a couple of introductory remarks to situate Guadalupe's work. Then, Guadalupe's is going to talk about his work. And then, we're going to transition to a Q&A, where all of you will also get to respond to Guadalupe's amazing work.
In the film Sin nombre, La Bestia, Bajo la Misma Luna, and Which Way Home, we see accounts of the harrowing conditions that immigrants and specifically immigrant children undergo as they leave Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Mexico, and ride La Bestia, or the beast, the freight trained network running from Central America through Mexico into the United States. We gather from these stories that the protagonist are leaving behind class violence, war, and dictatorship, gender-based discrimination, and poverty.
They are children going to the United States. Yet what is not represented explicitly or not at length in the films is, the places left behind have been the sites of established US imperialism, intervention, and military experimentation, and multinational corporations like United Fruit Company acquiring land and labor-- all historical elements that have contributed to and complicated the dispossession and displacement of these areas, and the serial colonialisms that are entangled there. These films and the exponentially growing narratives of undocumented dramas demonstrate a shift in the displaced "we" that Hannah Arendt identified in her seminal 1943 essay "We Refugees."
While the UNHCR and each country have their legal definitions of what constitutes a refugee, the marker has become harder to pinpoint. The numbers of displaced persons internally and abroad have grown in numbers. But what has not changed is the systemic conditions that create structures that require one to seek refuge.
So although refugees, and asylees, and the undocumented, and citizens are categorically different in legal markers, these categories are not static. A person can move from one label to the other. What unites them is a phenomenological experience-- what Giorgio Agamben, in response to Arendt's essay 50 years later, called the challenge of the masses in motion. What I find interesting in these undocumented narratives of the films named above is a hemispheric childhood of the masses in motion who cross borders and who carry those wounds of those borders crossing into new lands and across generations.
From this hemispheric perspective, it is possible to apprehend that what we see in the storylines is arrive-ins who possess knowledge about the conditions and strategies that are needed to survive and thrive in what Gloria Anzaldúa called the borderlands. Some of the narratives have been made legible through the popular discourse of the 2012 Obama era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals executive orders that led to the popular refrain of people who are "Daka-mented."
Yet many who are undocumented cannot become "Daka-mented" and did not fit model migrant myths proposed by DREAMer narratives. If the figure of the migrant is the quintessential icon of the 21st century, the result is not simply that we need to understand her, their, and his experience to sympathize with their experience, but that we need to take seriously her knowledge production generated from that experience beyond one storyline.
So alongside a film and protest poster art, which was and continues to also be an important avenue for promoting immigrant rights, what does performance offer to these discussions? And how does its circulation and production animate these concerns differently from other forms? In the last four decades, investigations and discussions linking performance to US immigration policies have flourished.
So we have many museum exhibitions, single-author projects, and edited collections that share an interest in 1, understanding how national borders function as a site of enforcement beyond their physical location around the periphery, and help performance visible-ize that restriction; 2, considering border performances as sites that not only reflect enforcement measures, but also are practices for political, social, and immigration change; 3, assessing the important role of theatrical performances for immigrants to stage competing ideas about the nation; and 4, evaluating how the performative elements of the law shape racialization and gender processes across borders.
So at the center of all of these concerns is evaluating the animated relationship between the conceptualization of the border-- what a border is-- and a performance's ability to shape and reshape that course around such a divisive topic. So I see in Guadalupe Maravilla's work and his various performances and installation a healing-centered knowledge production that extends from his undocumented experience. Having left Salvador unaccompanied and undocumented at age 8 in the 1980s, and in 2006 becoming a naturalized citizen in the United States, he is part of the undocumented and formerly undocumented scholars and artists, including myself, who are defining the conditions of what Afro Indigenous scholar and artist Alan Pelaez calls illegal epistemologies.
This is a conceptual discourse that blossoms from people who were made undocumented by coming to the United States, rather than written from those who were given citizenship status at birth, and writing about those who are undocumented. So to this network of knowledge formation, Guadalupe offers sound, choreography, [SPANISH], [SPANISH], or codices, installation, and the central role that undocumented cultural production plays in generating and transmitting knowledge. More importantly, Guadalupe challenges us to consider how this knowledge production heals people and their bodies impacted by the double wounds of immigration policies and illness.
He transforms spaces into sites of ritual dialogue, [SPANISH]. Based in Brooklyn, New York, Guadalupe has been featured at the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Queens Museum, Socrates Sculpture Art, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Miami. His work is currently being featured at the Brooklyn Museum as a solo exhibition.
His performances are linked to and animated through the social and spiritual. He helped organize food distribution campaigns and vibrational therapy sessions in churches during the pandemic, details of which he will share today. So I'm grateful that the Johnson Museum of Art orchestrated Guadalupe's visit today, and is identifying other opportunities for a return appearance.
So as fortune would have it, his performance work and mode of working links to my current book project, called The Alien Comments-- Choreography and Performance Beyond Citizenship. So in it, I identify culturally, racially, and legally marked alien bodies, either as illegal aliens or alien citizens who articulate their own politics of engagement and estrangement to highlight the oppressive conditions that link migrant petitions for national citizenship to normative gender, birthing, colonial, and racial regimes. It foregrounds arists to explore the theme and experience of alienhood, and in some cases, actually claim the term "alien" altogether.
This community marks an alternative geography through the body and the maternal, queer, spiritual healing, and decolonial performances. These elements say more about the audience's estrangement caused by economic and legal changes rather than the artists themselves. So it lingers in the gap that is created between the legal and illegal, rather than trying to get people out of the metaphorical shadows without considering how coming out of that space contributes to white settler futurity.
So Guadalupe's transdisciplinary work offers much to these dialogues. Because it holds onto the void space that is created in the movement between these two legal categories, and how they shape our bodies, organs, and cells in the everyday, or [SPANISH]. So thank you, Guadalupe, for agreeing to my introductory remarks and allowing me to facilitate the Q&A after your talk.
And I hope this serves as a start of a conversation in the alien comments. So please join me in welcoming Guadalupe to Cornell. Bienvenido.
[APPLAUSE]
GUADALUPE MARAVILLA: Hello, everyone. Thank you, Cornell, for inviting me to be here. And thank you all for being present.
Before I start, I would like to say that I'm going to share my story. But my story is one of hundreds of thousands of stories that have come from Central America, and millions of stories about displacement from all over the world. I'm just very fortunate to be here, and to continue to make the work that I'm doing.
I'm going to start by talking about my Disease Thrower sculptures. The Disease Thrower sculptures are healing instruments. They are shrines.
And I show them in exhibitions. And they get activated in my studio when they're being made. But also they're constantly evolving and changing. I think all the work that I'm showing today is from 2019 forward.
I'm at number 22, right now-- sculptures that I've made since 2019. So they're constantly evolving. And I'm learning, I'm growing along with them.
So the objects that you see in the sculptures-- they're objects that I collect from retracing my own migration route. So basically, the process of healing, for me, takes many different forms. And one of them is that I go back to these places of trauma. I go back to El Salvador.
I go back to Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico. And I go back to these places that I crossed when I was eight years old, when I was unaccompanied, when I was a child. And I go back now as a US citizen, as an adult. And I collect objects from these places, right?
I believe in animism. Everything has energy. So when I'm in a market or anywhere in these countries, I'm looking for a specific energy that these objects may have. Some of them-- this is a plastic mannequin hand has a broken finger, As opposed to this very intricate alacran, the scorpion, right?
So I'm thinking about the energy that they have. And then, I bring them back to the studio. And they become part of the Disease Throwers.
And the name Disease Thrower comes-- it's just a name that I've invented. And it's really meaning to repel illnesses, repel bad energy, repel just disease. A lot of the Disease Throwers have these plastic anatomical models on top of them that represent an illness from someone that I know, someone in my family has.
In the beginning, it started off, was just an homage to people that had cancer. For example, this one-- someone that I knew had lung cancer. So I made this sculpture for them. This one was for someone who had breast cancer.
This anatomical model has actual tumors on it. And that became part of the Disease Thrower. A lot of the work that I do is-- I collaborate, right?
So when I go back to collect materials, I also am interested in developing relationships and creating micro-economies around my work. I met this man in Mexico, in Michoacan. And he was making these tiny, little, very complex shapes made out of this natural material. And I asked him, if I give you a drawing, can you make me a larger one?
And that can become part of my sculpture. And he agreed. So he [INAUDIBLE] I never found him again when I went back. But he was able to make me five of these. So they became part of the sculpture.
Just recently, I met someone that I'm working with that is carving things out of volcanic rock for me. I give him a design, and he makes them for me. Again, very interested in creating micro-economies.
I'm an artist myself. I can probably do these things if I put the energy into it. But the whole idea is to create a micro economy based on the work that I'm doing.
Also really thinking about the Tripa Chuca, which is a drawing game from El Salvador that you see here in the background. This is the ACA in Miami. And these drawings-- so basically, I get the walls painted one color.
And I show up to the space with some markers. And it becomes-- it's a drawing game. I actually used to play this game as a child when I was crossing the border. It was a 2-and-1/2-month journey.
I had a notebook. And we used to play this game. It's a numbers game that you put on a piece of paper. And you alternate numbers. And it starts to form a pattern.
It was like a topographical map. It's like a labyrinth. It's a bond between two people.
And again, thinking of micro-economy-- so I always have the museum pay whoever collaborates with me, and someone who is undocumented. Or maybe, depending on the show, someone who is a cancer survivor gets to play with me. This is not a performative act.
This happens behind the scenes while we're installing, or before the objects even into the room. We'll make the play the game. It sets the tone for the energy that I want in the space.
You see these embroideries in the back of this installation. Again, those are my drawings. I met someone in the street in Mexico that was making these tiny little patches. And I asked her if she can make one of my drawings really large.
Unfortunately, I think we made about 20 of them. But unfortunately, she died of COVID during the middle of the pandemic. It was a great loss. The people that I collaborate with become my friends. And I build these relationships.
Sound-- sound as medicine is something that's really dear to my heart. Actually, while I was doing radiation treatments, I was exposed to the gongs, right? And I've been knowing about sound as medicines. I think I started working with it since 2012.
But the gongs themselves-- I actually used them when I was doing radiation treatments. Our bodies are about 60%, 70% water. In the water in our bodies, we carry stress.
We carry anxiety. We carry trauma. And the vibrations of these gongs and many, many other instruments, or vocals can release a lot of toxins that we carry. And I'll elaborate more on that in a bit.
And here is the Tripa Chuca being played on the gong itself. OK, so I guess two years before the pandemic happened, I got a Soros grant. And I started doing these community circles for the undocumented community. When I was doing this work, I was really thinking about how trauma can manifest into a different type of illness, right?
And not that everyone that has a trauma will have cancer, but I directly connect being displaced when I was a child, experiencing war as a child, and my trauma manifesting into a cancerous tumor when I was 35 years old. I was actually doing my thesis when I found out I had cancer, during my MFA.
So the more people I talked to within my community, I realized that everyone was really struggling with their health in one way or the other. And sometimes, it's just really heavy stress. Sometimes, the stress has manifested already into a depression.
Sometimes, the stress has manifested into something more serious. So with this grant, I was able to rent this space in the Lower East Side in New York City. And I would guide these workshops. And I would do sound baths.
But also I would hire practitioners from all over the world to come do healing work for us. And these practitioners-- basically anyone from a mycologist would come, someone who would do acupuncture, a therapist, someone from the city of New York that would teach us about where to buy organic affordable produce, a nutritionist. And then, I would hire a Salvadorian chef. She would cook us a nutritious meal. And we'd talk about our experiences, our struggles, and ask questions to the healers that were in the room with us.
So this went on for almost two years. And again, when I talk about my cancer, I consider it to be a blessing. It really opened up so many things for me.
I personally, when I was going through that experience, I did my chemotherapy. I did radiation. I had two surgeries.
But in addition to that, I worked with healers, curanderos, witches, brujos from all over the world. They just started coming to me, one after the next. And I worked with all these people from Tibet, from China, from Korea, from Israel, Native Americans, curanderos from Mexico, shamans from El Salvador, Central America, shamans from Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, Colombia, Chile.
All of this knowledge just started coming to me, right? And it's learning about plant medicine, learning of sound as Medicine, learning about ancient ways to heal, new ways to heal, right? The gongs that I use are actually-- some of them are calibrated to the same sound frequencies as planets.
Some of them have the same sound frequencies as the sun, for example, as the moon. And we use that as a healing tool. Something really important that I stress is that I don't believe in healing anyone myself. And I don't believe my Disease Throwers heal anyone.
We're there to open up the portals for the healing to happen. You are your own medicine. You are your own healers.
What I do is, I provide people with the tools to do the healing work themselves. That is the work that you have to do internally. Here we are with a herbalist.
And she's showing us all the medicinal qualities in the East Village in New York City-- the weeds growing out, and how strong they are. And we're making tinctures here. Here's a sound bath.
Here, we're doing some sort of exercise routines, some Reiki. And here, we are having the conversations. Acupuncture with sound therapy.
[GONGS]
So immediately when the pandemic hit, the community I was working with for the last two years got impacted. They lost their work. A lot of the people in the community were nannies. So that job disappeared.
They were making deliveries. Those jobs disappeared, because everybody was home. And living paycheck to paycheck, being undocumented in the US-- if those jobs are taken away, you have nothing immediately. So it came as a shock.
So immediately, they started reaching out to me. Guadalupe, do you have any work for us? And it just escalated really, really fast. Within a few days, I was getting all these calls from the community.
And I got my stimulus check. And then, I split it into four. And I gave it to four families.
And then, I put this on Instagram and asked for help. Was there anyone out there willing to give donations? I'm taking them.
And then, my phone was blown off the hook. Everyone's calling me. People I didn't know were calling me.
Guadalupe, I have a family. I'm a single mom. I have three kids. I have no work. We have nothing to eat.
Can you help? Someone would call me a couple of minutes later. I'm a trans woman from Central America. I'm in the toxic household. I need to get out of here.
I have nowhere else to go. Do you have money for that? And these calls started coming. I immediately took care of my immediate circle that I knew.
But then, all this giant amount of calls started coming to me. Luckily, the community in my Instagram was giving me tons of money. I was able to raise around $80,000 in 6 months. So the money was coming slowly at first.
But then, literally, people would call me and say, OK, meet me here. I'll have my friend drop it off, drop off the cash. It was just passing money around. The only thing that I would ask for them is to actually let me photograph your hands holding the envelope so I can ask for money.
So this went on. But it got to the point where it was not sustainable. After a couple of months of this, I was losing sleep. And I was like, OK, I don't know what to do.
Because I'm down to $500 bucks. And I have this family here-- a family of six with nothing to eat. And I had this other person that just got out of ICE detention. And they have nowhere to go.
Who do I give the last $500 to, right? And this was a constant thing. And it's like, well, how did I get into this position, right?
The system has completely failed these people. And it was very tough making decisions with people depending on you. And then, someone recommended me to this pastor in Brooklyn, in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.
And this is a beautiful New Yorker article. If you have time to, you can even listen to it. It's a 30-minute listen on the New Yorker website. And it talks about him, and what he was doing.
He was feeding about 3,000 people per week. And I'm a highly spiritual person. But I'm not religion-- but I really believe in his cause. He was also formerly undocumented.
So I just started working with him, just joined forces with him. And I did everything from delivering hot meals to elderly undocumented people. Actually, we were working on a roof garden on top of the church. And then, with the money that I was receiving, instead of handing it to people, I started buying grains.
I would buy 1,500 pounds of grains every week. And I would go to the pastor, pick them up, put them in my Jeep, and take them to the church. We had bags of dry rice, of beans, and Maseca, the corn flour.
And then, they would get distributed into smaller bags and packaged into other donation boxes that came from other places. The church basically turned into a warehouse. Literally, up until six months ago, this was happening.
But what was really a major blessing was that I was able to continue the work that I was doing before in the church. Because healing could not stop. This is before we became vaccinated.
We were still going. We were still gathering. And we had no choice.
There's a lot of trauma in this place. And we just had to-- and people were coming out of ICE detention in the middle of a pandemic. And here they are, right? So we had to continue.
[GONGS]
And around that same time, I was invited by Creative Time to do a project. And it's called Spirit Level. And I was really looking at images of the Notre Dame Cathedral during World War II.
And they actually put sandbags in the infrastructure because of all the bombs are falling, just to protect the infrastructure while they were still holding mass, right? So it reminded me of what we were doing. We're not holding mass in the church.
But we're doing sound baths, right? The healing has to continue no matter what's happening during the pandemic. It also was thinking about how I as a child in the middle of the Civil War-- I would still walk to school for 20 minutes on my own, right?
The kids would just continue their life, even though the war is happening. So I started thinking, doing research on how bags of rice get shipped, right? This is me in the warehouse doing my daily pickup, and picking up the Maseca.
And the Maseca is the corn flour. We will make tortillas, or tamales, and these kind of things. It was really important for us.
And so for the Creative Time project, we actually got this amazing space in New York City in Corona, Queens, which is where-- it got really hit pretty hard with the pandemic. It's one of the most diverse places in the world. And the pandemic grew really strong there.
So this is the Great Hall of Science. It's a Museum there. And we actually had that space. And the idea was to actually create three pyramids of food in the space, along with some sculptures, and do a lot of the healing work there with the whole healing team that I have.
And basically, the pyramids were going to be of Maseca bags, of the beans, and the rice. And they were going to be 42,000 tons of food we were going to have of these pyramids. And the idea was to exhibit them for two weeks, and then distribute them back to the food bank, back to the church, and then just use art in this way to give back to people in need.
So the space was this beautiful space with stained glass, these 100-foot walls. I had this projection in the space. And this is a design that I made based on the tiles that were there of an Indigenous Mayan hand holding the corn, the precious corn.
And I was commissioned to do these Disease Throwers. And these were the first sculptures that are made that are these tables made out of-- they're steel. The skeleton's made out of steel. So every time I play the gong, different parts of it vibrate.
So I invented this vibrational healing instrument. It was originally designed for people that were hard of hearing, and completely deaf so they can experience a sound bath by feeling the vibration of the sculpture. But eventually, it turned into something more than just that, because I was really using this during the pandemic as a way to work deeper with sound therapy in my studio.
March of 2021, I had my solo show at my gallery in New York City. And again, this is right when the vaccines-- at the end of this show, the vaccine started becoming, started happening. But here, we were gathering a group of 12 for a sound bath.
I think we did 30 soundbites in the space. And the Seven Ancestral Stomachs-- I'm talking about literally my gut. Because I had cancer in my colon. And something that I learned along the way-- that if I learn to heal myself properly, I can heal seven generations forward, and then seven generations back.
Because generational trauma is real. And it can get passed on to you without even knowing it. So cleansing myself properly by doing the healing work on myself, I'm able to alleviate my mother, my grandmother, and so on back, and then if I have any descendants going forward, cleanse them so I don't pass my traumas onto them.
So these are Retablos. So the Retablos-- again, this is going back to retrace my own migration route. I came across these paintings. And I was really interested in them.
Because in El Salvador, they don't exist anymore. They're still happening in Mexico. Frida Kahlo was really influenced by this type of painting.
And this type of painting came from Europe. It came from Italy, Spain, and Portugal into the Americas. And originally, they were these devotional paintings. They were religious, right?
So when a house would burn down and the chickens were saved, they would go to a retablo painter in the town and ask if they could make a painting and describe the story, and thank the Virgin Mary, or Jesus Christ, or whoever for saving the chickens. And then, they will put this new painting in their house to protect the home, right?
So this eventually came to Latin America, this tradition. So I came across a fourth generation retablo painter. His name is Daniel Vilchis. And I told him I wanted him to make a retablo of my border crossing.
And it was a beautiful retablo that he-- I just told him my story traditionally. And then, he designed it. But then I said, OK, I want to go further. Actually, what if I give you a digital sketch?
Can you make me a painting of that? I'm an artist. So I wanted to have full control of it. So this is the first digital sketch that I gave him. And I said, can you paint this?
And then, he did this. And then I went back to him. And I was like, oh, can you make the hand green?
And then, he made that hand green. And so then, we started going back on what's up a couple hundred times for every little detail, to the fingernails being a little bit too dark. Can you make it lighter, and so on.
So we started building this relationship like this. So during the pandemic, we've made over, I think, over 30 retablos now. Here's another one.
Then, I take it. Once I receive it, I create this whole frame with with it, with the material that I use. The material that I use is this white material that you see here. And all the Disease Throwers have it.
It's a material that I invented while I was a BFA student, like some of you guys are here. And I was putting everything in the microwave during my BFA times. [LAUGHS] And one day, I came across this little piece that came out of the microwave.
And I was like, wow, this is going to be a sculpture one day. So pay attention to the experiments you're doing now. Because they may pay off later.
So yeah. So then, so this is the skin to the work. And actually, they're getting much bigger. They're getting more complex.
And we're completely synchronized right now. I'm also going to work with his father also, and then his brother. So some of these retablos may have three or four different signatures on them at some point, because it'll be a whole collaboration that happens.
Again, it's about building, creating these micro-economies around the work. I don't go back to these places to get affordable work done. I actually pay them the fees that I would pay someone in New York City.
So they get paid really well, I think. I really pay attention to that. This is another one here. And this one is really talking about, after my surgeries, I had three giant scars on my stomach.
And I actually got them tattooed. And I talk about how that empowered me, myself. So even that process of getting tattooed over my scars was part of the healing process.
This one actually has-- and then sometimes, I put objects in them. So this is a rock to represent the tumor itself. And this one has a dehydrated tortilla in the frame.
And also another layer to the retablos is that I started collecting stories for people in the church. So I only made four of these. And the whole idea is to, instead of telling my own story, tell a story for someone in the church.
And in return, after the piece is sold and after the government gets their 30%, after the gallery gets their 50%, I give this person, whoever shared this story, 50% of my earnings of the sale of the sculpture-- I'm sorry, of the retablo, right? So this is a story about Aristoteles, who's working at the church.
And this is the original photograph. And the church looked like a warehouse, basically. There were just boxes everywhere. And basically, he was in ICE detention for 19 months.
And the only reason he was released was because his appendix exploded. And he sued ICE. And they just released him.
That's how he got out of ICE detention for 19 months. This one is also about him. And then, he's talking about how his health is deteriorating rapidly even now. We're working on his health right now.
But when he came out of there, it did a lot of damage to himself. And it's really hard to fully heal. So he has to wear it this boot. Again, his health-- he actually lost a toe because of his health.
He had to get it amputated. And I made a retablo about that. And literally, when I called him, he was in the hospital. And he mentioned that he had gotten his toe cut off.
And the retablo actually talks about how when he was in the hospital, he was, even after being in ICE detention for 19 months, he never felt this low. Getting a toe amputated, he said it was probably the lowest point in his life. And then, he mentioned that he had been really depressed for two days, never feeling like this.
But then, another person came, I guess, in the hospital. His neighbor talked about how he was also undocumented. And he just had his eye removed. And he also had cancer.
They found out he had cancer. All this happened to him. And then, he realized, what am I complaining about?
Someone always has it rougher than us, right? And so I made a retablo about that. This is a retablo of a trans woman from Honduras that was also in a bad situation.
They escaped Honduras. They were attacked by the police department, and had to flee, and also came to the church for help and for shelter at the church with the pastor. And I made a retablo about her and her journey.
I'm in the process of making another one for her right now. This is my exhibition that I did last year in the Socrates Sculpture Park, Planeta Abuelx. And this is the first time I made an outdoor sculpture.
It was really-- when I teach sculpture, I always talk to my students. I want them to think about the ecological footprint that your sculptures may have. And so for this one, we got 8,000 pounds of recycled aluminum from a scrapyard, everything from refrigerator parts to bicycle parts, and so on.
Cut them into little cubes and melted them. And that became the material. And they would make these molds for the sculpture. The gongs are there also.
We also had a fire pit, and also had a medicinal garden around it, ancestral garden. We grew corn, squash, beans-- tres hermanas. They grow together in Latin America.
And also we did a lot of plants that were healing plants in the space, and also built a fire pit. Because we were getting ready to do these really massive sound baths outside. In one sound bath, we actually had about 1,000 people show up to a sound bath.
Also I still have issues with my digestion. So I could only eat probably 60%, 50% of the foods in the world without getting sick. So I have a very specific diet.
So at the end, I grab a lot of the vegetables that helped me in the very beginning. And we poured the hot aluminum into them and cast them. And here's a video of that.
Again, that was part. Every time I'm making something, there's a ritual component that happens during the process of making as well. This is what they looked like afterwards. And then, we welded them on the sculpture.
Also this was the first time I actually got to do something for the cancer community. So I invited cancer survivors to come to Socrates. And I performed a ritual with them with a whole team of sound healers that I work with.
And this also became an opportunity to have an open mic, if anybody wanted to share any thoughts. Here's the microphone. And it's really important.
Because to actually open that space for people with cancer-- and what I mean by cancer survivors, I'm referring to anyone that has cancer, someone that has overcome cancer, or anyone that has had a family member with cancer. Because there's a type of trauma there. So all those people are invited to come and share, open mic.
But after the ceremony, I said, anyone that wants to keep sharing, come to the fire and connect with anyone that's there. And something really beautiful happened. People went on microphone and talked about their strange form of cancer that they had.
And then, they ended up meeting with other people with the same kind of cancer by the fire. And that turned into a conversation between them, and a friendship. So that was a really beautiful moment. A little clip of how it got set up in the beginning.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
[WIND BLOWING]
[CRACKLING FIRE]
[PERCUSSIVE INSTRUMENTS VIBRATING]
[WIND BLOWING]
[PERCUSSIVE INSTRUMENTS VIBRATING]
[GONGS]
[CRACKLING FIRE]
[WIND BLOWING]
[PERCUSSIVE INSTRUMENTS VIBRATING]
[GONGS]
[END PLAYBACK]
So a lot of the work that we do is really thinking about when we play the gong itself that we're pretty much doing Reiki to the gong. So when we play the gong, we're meditating. And we're sending vibrations to the people that are there.
In that case, we actually had a fire keeper. That is actually a healer that uses fire. And that person was collecting any energy that was being released.
Because we had over 1,000 people. So you imagine how intense that was. This is my current show that I have at MoMA up until September. If you're in New York in May, in June, we're doing 20 more sound baths in the space. We did 34 already.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
[GONG]
- Sound as medicine is something that's been going on for a long time. And today, we're continuing that here, particularly using the gongs. And they had the same frequencies as planetary systems, and different elements.
And we use that as the healing tool. That's what we're using today. The bodies are around 70% water.
And in this water, we carry stress. We carry anxiety. And sometimes, we can even carry trauma. And the vibration helps us release those tensions.
[PERCUSSIVE INSTRUMENTS VIBRATING]
[GONGS]
[END PLAYBACK]
GUADALUPE MARAVILLA: So my current show at the Brooklyn Museum just opened two weeks ago. I'll come back to that image. Tierra Blanca Joven. This show is talking about displacement, four different types of displacement.
Tierra Blanca Joven is actually a volcanic eruption that happened in El Salvador. And "tierra blanca joven" and translates to a young, white Earth, or young white ash. And basically, is in the 5th century, one of the biggest volcanic eruptions happened in El Salvador.
And the actual Maya civilization-- they were actually displaced. Because there was 19 months of just this ash coming out of this volcano. And they couldn't grow their crops. So they were displaced.
The second displacement I talk about is my own. I was displaced because of a Civil War. The third one is a video that I'm showing in the space of a performance that I did with teens in the detention center. And they're from El Salvador, Central America as well.
They were displaced because of corrupt government, and gang violence, and extreme poverty. And the fourth is actually the objects themselves in the museum's collection. Because they're displaced. And they should be in Central America.
So here are installation shots of this. And this Disease Thrower Number 0. And this sculpture is black. But I didn't use paint. It is actually all the ash from all the fires that I did at Socrates.
I saved the ash. And I made it into a powder. And I grinded it into powder, I guess. And then, it became part of the material that I use.
So it has the energy of all those healing ceremonies that we did.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
[ZIPPER SOUND]
[RINGING]
There's also a sound coming out of the conch shells themselves. I put tiny speakers in them. And there's a sound bath that is coming out of the speakers of the conch shells.
[RINGING]
[END PLAYBACK]
These are the objects that I chose from the museum's collection to be part of the exhibition. They are all from Central America. I was very honored to go to the space, and collect the objects, and just choose them to be part of my work.
And these are my blood ancestors, but also my sculptural ancestors. They are the artists that are really most connected to, that really most inspire me. Here's a few retablos in the space.
And this hand that I use-- I made this design. And it's basically influenced by the Maya. It's a Mayan hand.
And there is a melting ice cube. The reference is to Immigration Customs Enforcement. Most of the people in detention are from Central America-- [COUGHS] excuse me-- and descendants of the Maya.
This is actually one of my favorite objects in the whole world. Actually, that's in the show as well. I've been looking at these objects in one of my books since I was 19 years old. And I can't believe it's part of my show.
It's a blessing. And they actually-- right before we exhibited, they scanned it. And they realized, actually confirmed it's a flute. It's going to be exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum right after my show.
So I was just really lucky that it actually had to go to Europe for another show. Because of COVID, that show got canceled. And it was available. So I was blessed.
So basically, this is a little video of when I come back from my trips. I just came back from Mexico with six suitcases full of things. And I'm just you guys my process, how I come back with all these things that eventually become part of the sculptures. And TSA loves to go through my bags and ask questions.
[LAUGHTER]
And sometimes, I do lose some precious things along the way. But I guess that's become part of the process, too, dealing with them. [LAUGHS]
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
And this is the video of the detention center that I was talking about. And I'll show that to finish.
[VOCALIZING]
In this video, I was invited to do a mask making workshop through MoMA education. And after that, I asked if we can go outside. Because it was their time to be outdoors.
And because they get to go outside for two hours out of the day, it was at a basketball time. So we got to go outside with the masks. And they actually do a performance.
[CHATTER]
- OK, OK. OK, [SPEAKING SPANISH].
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH], OK. [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- OK, [SPEAKING SPANISH].
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- OK, [SPEAKING SPANISH].
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- OK. [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
- [LAUGHS]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [ROARS]
[SHOUTING TOGETHER]
[LAUGHTER]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [LAUGHS]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [YELLS]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- OK, [SPEAKING SPANISH].
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [LAUGHS]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [WHISTLES]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [WHISTLES]
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
[YELL TOGETHER]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [LAUGHS]
- [WHISTLES]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
[YELPING]
[LAUGHTER]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [WHISTLES]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH] [LAUGHS]
- [LAUGHS]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
- [LAUGHS]
[LAUGHTER]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH] OK?
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- OK? [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
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- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- OK. [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
- Woo!
- [WHISTLES]
- Oh, oh, oh, oh!
- [YELPS]
- OK, [SPEAKING SPANISH].
[CHATTER]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
[CAMERA FLASH CLICKING]
- [SPEAKING SPANISH]
[CAMERA FLASH CLICKING]
[END PLAYBACK]
GUADALUPE MARAVILLA: Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
JUAN MANUEL ADLAPA MUNOZ: Thank you. Just join me again in just applauding for Guadalupe.
GUADALUPE MARAVILLA: Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
JUAN MANUEL ADLAPA MUNOZ: So we're going to transition, now, to a question and answer portion of our talk. And I have a couple of questions to ask Guadalupe.
GUADALUPE MARAVILLA: Yeah, yeah. Sure.
JUAN MANUEL ADLAPA MUNOZ: But also I'm going to open it up to all of you. And there's also a Zoom component to this, or a live streaming, at least. So there might be some questionings coming from that. First, I just want to say thank you for taking the time to show your work.
It's extensive. But it's so intimate in a way. And so just thank you for that. And my first question, actually, is a response to that last video that you shared of the youth in the detention center.
Can you talk a little bit more about the masks, and the youth's response to the mask? Because it was doing something to the relationship. So can you talk a little bit more about how you created the mask and how the youth responded to that mask in that space?
GUADALUPE MARAVILLA: Yeah, no, totally. So I guess, just to explain a little bit about detention centers, they're all very different. They all work in different ways.
Here, they were supposed to be waiting for trial. But it's been, for one of them, it was 14 months that he was waiting and completely displaced. And they're children. They're 11 years old to, I guess, 18 in the space.
And I guess I played this game with them to try to understand what their daily schedule was like. And I just thought about, wow, imagine just doing this, and repeating every day. And also you start making bonds with people. And then, they have to leave. And then, a new person comes in.
So it's very challenging. So I went in there and did a mask making workshop. And I played this game with them and actually showed them a mask from Africa.
And I was like, OK, guess what country this is from. And then, we'd go to another mask from Peru. And they would guess what country this is from.
And then, I started bringing in things from Central America. And then, I started showing them, wow, this is actually-- these are your ancestors right here that made these masks. And they're just asking me questions about.
That they never thought-- they didn't know it. So I started really forming a really beautiful conversation. But also it was really important that I told them my story, how myself, I was undocumented-- immediately bonded with me.
Within seconds, they opened up to me immediately. So the mask making workshop-- I always see it as almost like the Trojan Horse to get me inside the space using art, right? And then afterwards, it was just that time for them to go outside.
So we were able to go outside. And because they were wearing masks, we were able to record. Normally, no pictures are allowed. But since we had a mask on, we could take pictures and videos.
So I was able to shoot this video. Yeah. But yeah, so and then, they actually got really creative with their masks.
And they were having conversations as we're making these masks. And actually, doing these mask making workshops, I'm actually doing them at the church on Saturday for children there as well, who are undocumented, but they're not in detention. Yeah.
JUAN MANUEL ADLAPA MUNOZ: Yeah, thank you for giving us some more insight into that process. So we'll open it up here to inside of the space. Any questions?
We have some microphones that are available. So if you want to ask a question, raise your hand. And a microphone will make its way to you.
GUADALUPE MARAVILLA: Don't be shy.
JUAN MANUEL ADLAPA MUNOZ: Yeah, don't be shy. So while you think about that, I'm going to check to see if there are any questions out there. No, so no open questions. Oh, you have a question here in the front.
AUDIENCE: Thank you so much for this talk, a gift for us all. You put so much creativity but also energy into the world. And it's amazing to sit in the lecture hall and feel that.
And in your response to this question, but also in your talk, you described the work from the Brooklyn Museum of Art as sculptural ancestors. And I was just wondering if you could elaborate. Say more about your selection process of those, and your relationship to those objects. Thank you.
GUADALUPE MARAVILLA: Yeah. So I grew up playing in the pyramids of El Salvador. And the pyramids in El Salvador are not as polished as the ones you see Mexico and Cancun, and these places that are really taking care of.
The ones in El Salvador are pretty much ruins. Parts of them are still under earth. They haven't even been dug up-- half of them. The back part, for example, is just soil and grass growing out of them. Sometimes, trees are still growing out of them.
But they've been looted, right? So as a kid, I remember going to the pyramids and playing. But there was, there's no museum next to it. There is no information about them.
And where are the objects? Who made these, right? So as a kid, my imagination was just going crazy. Who made these, right?
And so I started doing a lot of research on my own once I got to the US, and asking a lot of questions about the Maya, and the [SPANISH], and just a lot of questions about who my ancestors were. And then, so I started becoming obsessed with collecting books. And again, like that one image that I was talking about-- this one was part of my books very early.
And I connect that with healing, right? It's like someone coming out of a plant. So I was always connected to them as makers, as sculptors.
And that's what I mean by my artist ancestors. They are the makers. These are my favorite sculptors.
So yeah. And also they themselves were actually-- they were shamans as well. The artists were shamans. And they were also healers.
They were artists. They were astronomers. They were mathematicians. They did everything.
It wasn't like, oh, I just paint, right? It wasn't like that. They did everything.
So that's also been inspiration to me. Because that's what I'm doing right now. I'm trying to do everything. I'm learning.
Everything feeds each other, right? The healing feeds the work and vice versa, in the many other things that I do. So that's what I mean; they're, I guess, my artist ancestors, but also my healing-- the ritual, all inspired by them, yeah.
JUAN MANUEL ADLAPA MUNOZ: There are a couple of questions online. So there's one that actually says, if you can say something about your jacket that you're wearing.
[LAUGHTER]
GUADALUPE MARAVILLA: So is just a hexagon blanket jacket that I got.
JUAN MANUEL ADLAPA MUNOZ: [LAUGHS]
GUADALUPE MARAVILLA: That's all I have to say about that. I've actually had that question asked me later in a panel that I did last week.
[LAUGHTER]
JUAN MANUEL ADLAPA MUNOZ: It's an indication of how amazing that jacket is. So there's a question in the back.
AUDIENCE: Hi. Hi, Guadalupe. I was wondering. So much of your work emphasizes building relationships and maintaining relationships, and really just creating these communities from the people that you meet, and the people that come to the sound baths, and that you heal, or that learn to be healed.
And I'm wondering how you maintain those, or how you work to-- just taking in capacity, and the limit that one has, and how you just work to maintain those relationships, and just, I guess, look at yourself and say, what can I take on? And then also, yeah.
GUADALUPE MARAVILLA: Yeah. Great question. Yeah, so basically, every Saturday, I'm at the church. So people know where to find me. And they know that I'm going to pretty much be doing a sound bath there in the evening.
So I'm easy to find there. And the community-- the door is open, basically. Anyone that wants to come-- and not just undocumented community. I have a community of-- the cancer community is also going to the church now.
Former students, friends that are going through depression or whatever they're struggling with-- they just show up. So that door is always open for them. And I feel very blessed that the pastor allows me to have that space that I can do that.
But in addition to that, every time I have an exhibition in a museum, they get activated there. We did 34 soundbites that MoMA already. And we're going to do 20 more.
So people can sign up, right? But yeah. So a lot of people ask me, how do you do all these things? How do you stay motivated and strong?
And it's because of the healing work that I do, right? I do a meditation every morning. And I'm constantly-- every time we activate, the space is giving a lot back to me.
Again, when we play the gongs, it's like, I'm not giving my energy. I'm a vessel. I'm channeling the light.
And I'm playing the gongs. I'm pretty much doing Reiki. And the energy moves in the space, right?
So actually, I feel very energized afterwards. So a lot of the work that I'm doing is everything that I love. So I don't get exhausted.
All young artists here, if you're doing a process that you don't like, or is exhausting, don't do it. Don't force it. Just do what you love.
And it sounds a little cliché, but it actually is that simple. So I've come to the point in my life that I don't do anything that I don't want to do.
I'm not forcing anything. If you start forcing things, it's the difference, too-- we have to be careful. Because sometimes, you have to persevere and get through certain things. And that's important.
But it's the difference between that and forcing something. So I don't force anything. And that's why I'm able to keep going.
JUAN MANUEL ADLAPA MUNOZ: I'm going to take another question from the virtual webs. Oh, yeah. Can you touch more on how food intertwines with cultural expression, identity in your work? That's from Candice.
GUADALUPE MARAVILLA: Yeah. Nutrition is extremely important. I think that I can't eat most of the food that most people can eat here. And but I realized that it has become a blessing.
I have such a clean diet. So that even going through cancer, I learned a lot about what the cancer cells can feed off when you're sick, right? And if you started thinking about it, a lot of the Indigenous ways of healing have to do with nutrition and what you put in your body.
If you think energetically about if you eat meat-- and I'm not I'm not judging anyone for eating meat. I just want to make that clear. But the way the animals are raised in 2022 in this country and most other countries is that they're pumped with hormones.
And if you see a cow and chicken, they're just in these boxes. They don't ever move, never walk on a grass field, right? Unless you're paying extra money for free range meat, right? And it's super expensive.
Who has access to that, right? So it's very political, what you eat. And also thinking about the energy of the animal. Imagine being in a cage cooked in there for all your life, getting injected with hormones.
That animal was tortured all its life. And all of a sudden, I'm putting that into my body, right? And it's hard. Because you're putting that energy into your body as opposed to having a free range chicken that's been free.
Just so it's a different type of energy. So energetically, I think that food is really important. And it's political as well, because the government has control over this.
They have control who gets to eat organic food because of the prices, right? And unfortunately, I wish I could-- yeah. Even just when I'm traveling, I can't eat organically, because it's not available, right?
So they make it impossible almost to do it. So yeah. So nutrition is really important in so many levels.
JUAN MANUEL ADLAPA MUNOZ: Any questions concerning-- right here? OK.
AUDIENCE: Hi. Thank you for sharing your work with us today. I'm curious about this idea of open-mindedness to these things, to the idea of spirituality. I think to my mom, who is an immigrant from El Salvador.
And I feel like if I brought up these ideas to her she might be a little bit like, he's loco. That's crazy.
GUADALUPE MARAVILLA: [LAUGHS]
AUDIENCE: But she too has her own health thing. So I wonder if, to even get these ideas presented to her-- how do you think about those things?
GUADALUPE MARAVILLA: Yeah and it's something that I deal with every week. So at the church, we have people that never have been exposed to this. And therefore, my spirituality is religion.
And that's about it. But I tell them my story. And we have workshops that we do in the space before every sound bath. And then slowly, they start believing in it.
Because the person next to them has been to 40 sound baths with me. And they're telling them how much it's helped them. And they slowly start believing in it.
But the way I see it, I don't have an instrument with me right now. But I usually just grab one of my instruments. And I play it.
And I'm like, OK, touch it. And feel the vibration of this. And then, I explain how we're 60%, 70% water. And then, people just start connecting to it and say, oh, let me try it.
And a lot of them are skeptical about it at first. But then afterwards, they're just like, what did we just experience? And then, they become believers.
And they start coming. But it is about doing this all the time, weekly, and just getting the trust, and just having that trust grow. But ultimately, I believe when people are going through really hard moments is when they're most receptive to different things.
So reaching out to the cancer community is super easy. Because we are searching for a cure. We're fighting for our lives.
So yeah. Every community is different. And sometimes, even when I go to the museums, it's completely different than working with the cancer community, or working in the church.
So it just varies. And I also learn that when I'm doing it in different countries. Different countries, different people, different countries are responding so differently to it as well.
But yeah. Sound as medicine is really, if you think about it-- vibration, it's the eyeball of my cat in this new sculpture, my cat Wi-Fi. And she looks very fierce in this photograph. [LAUGHS] But she's a vibrational healing instrument.
So when Wi-Fi sits on my lap and she purrs, automatically it relaxes me, right? So if you think about vibration, if you think about Tibetan throat singing, they use the vibration, right? If you think about the drumming and the percussion instruments from Africa during rituals, that is the type of sound as medicine.
The flutes and the shamans from South America also use vibration and sound as medicine. And even the cat does it, right? So when I start explaining it like this, and then they hear the gongs, or whatever-- flutes that we have during the ceremonies, they're just making connections. So I really believe sound can be medicine, yeah.
JUAN MANUEL ADLAPA MUNOZ: One question over here.
AUDIENCE: If you're comfortable sharing, can you talk a little bit more about your journey as a kid coming to the US, and what that transition was like?
GUADALUPE MARAVILLA: Yeah, totally. So I think that it's really important to talk about, I guess, traumatic experiences when one is ready. And I'm totally ready.
But it is part of the healing process. It's like going back to confront these lands that I go to, being open to sharing with one person, sometimes, is a big step. Telling another person is another step.
And then eventually, I got to the point that I'm very comfortable talking in lectures and writing about it, and being open about it, right? So when I was literally-- when I was four or five, my father was considered a communist by the military during the Civil War. So they were coming after him.
He was just a car mechanic. And he had to escape. And eventually, they started coming after my mother.
And she had to leave. So that left us with my grandmother. And Civil War-- there's bombs falling everywhere. And eventually, they hired a coyote, a person to cross. I was by myself. My whole family had left because they had different ways out that were easy.
And they didn't realize they were going to have to hire a coyote to get me across. I was eight years old at that time. And I was able to-- I just want to make this clear. It's very different now, what's happening now-- that journey-- than it was back then.
Because it was new when I did it. We were actually escaping the Civil War. Now, for the immigrants that are there, there's all these obstacles set up for them.
There's cartels. There's people waiting for immigrants to come across and rob them, take advantage of them, exploit them, and so on. So my journey was very different. So I was very blessed that I actually was passed from-- I went by land from Honduras, Guatemala, all over Mexico, 2 and 1/2 months journey not communicating with my parents.
And I was just being passed from coyote to coyote, person to person. I would stay from family to family all the way to Tijuana. And then, I was in Tijuana for 2 and 1/2 months at the border. And eventually, I crossed.
And again, very blessed. I saw a lot of things that a child shouldn't see, right? But I'm here. And I feel empowered by my experience.
And again, talking about whatever trauma that anyone has experienced it-- one thing is healing from it. And I'm not fully healed from it. I believe that trauma-- maybe, you have to heal for the rest of your life, depending on how it is. It's constant healing, the work.
But it's also, what do you do with that, right? So I'm not just here telling you that story. But it's also, OK, what am I going to do with this, right? How do I help others?
Now, that was over 35 years ago. And now, how do I help? So I feel like because I was part of the first wave of undocumented kids to come here, I feel like I have all this knowledge that can benefit someone that just crossed last week, right?
And what's going to happen if trauma doesn't get worked on, right? And how do you heal yourself? So I provide people with the tools to do the healing work themselves.
So that is my mission in life now. And also cancer survivors as well-- the same thing. I have knowledge that I picked up from all these healers, natural healing ways.
And sometimes, it's little simple things that the medical industry doesn't tell them that can help them just get through radiation that I know, right? So those little tips can go a long way. Yeah.
AUDIENCE: Thank you so much. I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit about your relationship to other Central American artists and performance artists.
GUADALUPE MARAVILLA: Yeah, no. That's a great question.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] few people like that who--
GUADALUPE MARAVILLA: Yeah. So I still-- actually, I don't have any family left in El Salvador. But I have a lot of artists that I've met over the years that are there. So I'm constantly in communication with them and their struggles, and their challenges, and everything that they're going through.
And in New York City for a long time, there's not a large Salvadoran community there. Up until the last 15 years, it's changed. But growing up, it was like, anyone who spoke Spanish was Cuban, and Puerto Rican, Dominican, right?
So I didn't really have a connection to Central America. If I was in Los Angeles, it would have been a whole different experience from me being here in New York City. So yeah, so that relationship is pretty strong, still, with all those artists. And yeah, they're constantly coming to my studio and building bonds. Yeah, yeah.
JUAN MANUEL ADLAPA MUNOZ: All right. Well, we have time for one more question. And then, we will then transition, OK?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
JUAN MANUEL ADLAPA MUNOZ: [LAUGHS]
AUDIENCE: Hi. Thank you again for this. So given the need for this healing work and the urgency of it, especially right now, given the number of migrants that are entering this country every single day, how do you envision this work being done on a systemic level and into the future?
GUADALUPE MARAVILLA: Yeah. So I want to build temples. I want to build these temples that are going to be mainly for the undocumented community and people with cancer, or any marginalized community.
In some cases, they'll be open to the public, right? And I feel like we don't have this space that someone that is struggling with can walk into without it being religious, right? So I want it to be a healing space that anyone can use.
And I want to devote those spaces for that type of healing, very specific. And I believe in intention. And I put it out there in the world already, so it's going to happen.
I just don't know when. But my idea is to build these giant shrines with my sculptures, full of gongs, and have them be run by artists and healers, and for them to actually get paid a fair salary, and have health benefits. And somehow, if another pandemic or something else happens, we can turn it into a warehouse.
And we'll be equipped for that, right? Just to help humanity. So that's my vision, without religion, without government, and without institutional help.
So that's the plan, yeah. I don't know when it's going to happen. But it will happen probably soon.
JUAN MANUEL ADLAPA MUNOZ: Thank you, Guadalupe. If you want to join me again in--
[APPLAUSE]
GUADALUPE MARAVILLA: Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
This visiting artist talk at the Johnson Museum of Art is the first in an ongoing series with the campus-wide Migrations Global Grand Challenge, part of Global Cornell, with support from the Mellon Foundation’s Just Futures Initiative. The Migrations initiative studies global migration of all living things through an interdisciplinary, multispecies lens, with a special focus on themes of racism, dispossession, and migration.
Guadalupe Maravilla is an acclaimed visual artist, choreographer, and healer based in Brooklyn. He was part of the first wave of unaccompanied, undocumented children to arrive at the United States border in the 1980s as a result of the Salvadoran Civil War and became a US citizen in 2006.
By combining pre-colonial Central American ancestry, personal mythology, and collaborative performative acts, Maravilla’s performances, sculptural objects, and drawings trace the history of his own displacement and that of others. Across all media, Maravilla explores how the systemic abuse of immigrants physically manifests in the body, reflecting on his own battle with cancer. His transdisciplinary artistic practice generates powerful symbols of renewal and ultimately nurtures collective narratives of trauma into celebrations of perseverance and humanity.
