Guadalupe Maravilla receives the Vilcek Prize in Visual Arts for his sculptures, installations, and performances that combine symbol, sound, and ritual; his immersive and evocative works explore concepts of migration, transcendence, and the human condition. 

Born in El Salvador, Maravilla came to the United States as an undocumented unaccompanied child at the age of 8 in 1984. His journey has shaped his life and work. The path he took—on foot, in the company of other youth, families, and coyotes—has become a central focus of his practice as an artist. 

Maps and paths are frequent themes in his work. Tripa chuca—a collaborative line-drawing game played by children in El Salvador—underlies his two-dimensional works, and creates paths on the ground in his installations. The game, roughly translated as “dirty guts,” involves one or more players devising labyrinthine lines to connect multiple points. The lines devised in this creative play are metaphors for the winding path of Maravilla’s immigration; they simultaneously evoke the textures of topographic contours. 

On his 36th birthday in 2012, Maravilla was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer. The revelation prompted the artist to embark on a new journey—one of not only physical healing, but spiritual and emotional healing from the trauma he endured as a youth. In 2019, he began a large series of work known as “Disease Throwers.”

Sculptural elements included in the Disease Throwers installations can be worn as headdresses or garments in healing rituals. Gongs embedded into armatures can be struck by Maravilla or others, creating sound and vibrations to develop a full sensory experience. 

“I believe in animism; everything has energy,” he says. “The Disease Throwers are sculptures, shrines, and instruments. They create a space for communities—where we can heal together, where we can build workshops and sound ceremonies around these exhibitions.”

Awards & Accomplishments

Guggenheim Fellowship, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2023)
Latinx Artist Fellowship, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Ford Foundation (2021)
Lise Wilhelmsen Art Award Programme Award, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Norway (2021)
Guggenheim Fellowship, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2019)
Soros Fellowship: Art Migration and Public Space (2019)
MAP Fund Grantee (2019)
Fountainhead Residency (2019) 
Franklin Furnace (2018)
Art Matters Grant (2018) 
Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Fountainhead Fellowship (2017)
Creative Capital Grantee in Experimental Film, Performance Art, Creative Capital (2016) 
Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant (2016) 
Dedalus Foundation Grant (2013)
The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation Award (2003)