Visiting Artist Lecture: Guadalupe Maravilla

Thursday, February 6, 2020
5:30pm | Campbell Hall 160

In 1984, at eight years old, Guadalupe Maravilla immigrated alone to the United States from El Salvador in order to escape the Salvadoran Civil War. Maravilla was part of the first wave of undocumented children to come to the US from Central America. Maravilla became a US citizen at twenty-seven. In 2016, as a gesture of solidarity with his undocumented father, who uses Maravilla as a last name in his fake identity, Maravilla changed his birth name Irvin Morazan to Guadalupe Maravilla.

Maravilla creates fictionalized performances, videos, sculptures and drawings that incorporate his pre-colonial Central American ancestry, personal mythology, and autobiography. Through a multidisciplinary studio practice, Maravilla traces the history of his own displacement, interrogates the parallels between pre-Columbian cultures and our border politics.