User:Vivivian/sandbox

= Guadalupe Maravilla = Guadalupe Maravilla, formerly known as Irvin Morazan (born 1976) is a multidisciplinary artist born in San Salvador, EL Salvador and based in Brooklyn, New York City and Richmond, Virginia. Maravilla explores current events, migration, ancient medicine, indigenous cultures and his autobiography through various mediums including performance, sculpture and video. Maravilla has performed and presented his work across the United States and Latin America, at the Whitney Museum, the New Museum, El Museo Del Barrio, the Caribbean Museum in Colombia and MARTE Museum in El Salvador.

Early Life and Education
Irvin Morazan was born in El Salvador in 1976. Maravilla was in a boy band in El Salvador from when he was 6 to 8 years old and toured around Central America entertaining people. Maravilla often played on the steps of the pyramids in El Salvador and spent his early childhood drawing and creating sculptures.

In 1984, Maravilla crossed the border into Texas alone escorted by a coyote to escape the Salvadorian Civil War. Maravilla and his family later arrived in New York City where he started attending art school and exploring different aspects of New York City culture, like hip-hop. He was undocumented until he became a US citizen at 16 years old. Maravilla went onto become the first in his family to go to college. He received his BFA in 2003 from the School of Visual Arts where he studied photography and later received a MFA in sculpture from Hunter College in 2013.

Art
Maravilla's practice combines indigenous traditions with urban culture. He often makes sculptural headdresses that mimic pre-Columbian dress, which serve as costumes in his performances. In 2011, Maravilla performed Crossing Performance at the Mexico-United States border. Maravilla wore a tall, spiky headdress fusing Mayan and futuristic imagery while swimming across the Rio Grande. The headdress contained a large solar reflector that reflected the sun’s light, drawing the attention of Border Patrol agents. Maravilla’s work is largely inspired by his childhood experience of emigrating alone from his homeland El Salvador to the United States. In 2016, Irvin Morazan changed his name to Guadalupe Maravilla as a gesture of solidarity with his undocumented father—who uses Maravilla as his last name in his fake identity. The el coyote—or border-crossing agent—is featured in his overall work. The sculptural work Border Crossing Headdress is Maravilla's interpretation of the coyote, made using soil from the American-Mexican border region.

Maravilla has staged multiple large-scale performances incorporating hip-hop, theater, sculpture, sound, video, and photography. His performance ''BOOM! BOOM! WHAMMM! SWOOSH!''(2017) consisted of him directing a feminist motorcycle gang inside the Texas State Capitol parking garage. Maravilla conducted over thirty immigrant performers. The participants included quinceñeras, Tibetan throat singers, and immigrants with disabilities.

In 2018, Maravilla collaborated with undocumented immigrants to create 10 drawings alongside a 42 ft mural. Particpants drew onto digital manipulations of the Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca (ca. 1550), a colonial Mexican manuscript that combines Nahua pictorial writing with European conventions of the historical annal. The lines are drawn based a Salvadoran game called Tripa Chuca, in which participants draw lines connecting pairs of matching numbers distributed across the page without crossing over previously drawn paths.

Solo Exhibitions

 * The Neighbors, part three: Love Thy Neighbor, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx (2017)
 * Xolo Yawning, Y Gallery, New York (2016)
 * Temple of the Bearded Man, DCKT Contemporary, New York (2011)

Group Exhibitions/Performances

 * Pacha, Llaqta, Wasichay: Indigenous Space, Modern Architecture, New Art, Whitney Museum of American Ar t, New York, NY (2018)
 * FIRST WE TAKE MANHATTAN, Ethan Cohen New York, NY (2016)
 * The Magus Performance, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY (2014)
 * 10, an exhibition celebrating MARTE Contemporary's 10 year anniversary, Museo de Arte de El Salvador (MARTE) and MARTE Contemporary (MARTE-C), San Salvador (2014)
 * Tandem in Pursuits: Armor & Ichthyology, Bronx, NY (2012)
 * 9th Annual BRONX RIVER Sights & SOUNDS Festival, Bronx River Art Center, Bronx, NY (2012)
 * Performa 11, The Dating Game, El Museo Del Barrio, NY (2011)
 * I Didn't Cross the Border, the Border Crossed Me, Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, NM (2010)
 * Hair Tactics, Jersey City Museum, Jersey City, NJ (2010)

Awards

 * Creative Capital Emerging Fields Award (2016)
 * Virginia Commonwealth University Fountainhead Fellowship (2014)
 * Dedalus Foundation Fellowship (2013)
 * Art Matters Grant (2012)
 * Cisneros Foundation Grant (2012)
 * Robert Mapplethorpe Award, Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation (2003)