Silent Zoomorph

Guadalupe Maravilla makes work that acknowledges the historical and contemporary contexts of immigrant culture, notably belonging to Latinx communities.

Artist Bio

Silent Zoomorph is a performance series that will materialize into a film consisting of wearable sculptures, fictionalized rituals and various esoteric forms of spirituality and ancient medicine. The rituals in the film are inspired by the meditations Guadalupe Maravilla underwent while receiving fifty-three sessions of radiation while living with cancer in 2013. Silent Zoomorph will serve as a framework to blur the physical and metaphysical line between the body, sculpture sound and light. Silent Zoomorph will take place in a Central American volcano, an ancient burial site, a contemporary Bolivian vernacular building, a radioactive desert, the Amazon, places of natural phenomenon and in trees where jaguars are born.

Discipline
Experimental Film, Performance Art
Award Year
2016
Status

In Progress

Themes

Guadalupe Maravailla

Guadalupe Maravilla

Richmond, VA

Guadalupe Maravilla (formally Irvin Morazan) is a transdisciplianary artist who was part of the first wave of undocumented children to arrive at the United States border in the 1980s from Central America. In 2016, as a gesture of solidarity with his undocumented father—who uses Maravilla as his last name in his fake identity—Irvin Morazan changed his name to Guadalupe Maravilla. As an homage to his own migratory history, and to that of others, Maravilla makes work that acknowledges the historical and contemporary contexts of immigrant culture, notably belonging to Latinx communities. Maravilla gained notoriety for his performances which are expansive and immersive, incorporating choreographed rituals, hand-made costumery, fusion music, smell, theatre, and audience participation. He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, and Richmond, Virginia, where he is an Assistant professor at VCU. He received his BFA from School of Visual Arts, and his MFA from Hunter College in New York.
Events