HØVIKODDEN.- Henie Onstad Kunstsenter announced the opening of Sound Botanica, the first solo exhibition in Europe by the artist Guadalupe Maravilla. Presenting more than 30 works, it brings together new commissions with pieces from four major series from Maravilla’s body of work: Tripa Chuca; Embroideries; Disease Throwers; and Retablos. These include sound baths, videos, sculptures, installations and performances that speak to the artist's autobiography, his personal mythology and his perspectives on colonial history.
Born in El Salvador in 1976, when he was just eight years old, Maravilla migrated to the United States alone, a child refugee fleeing the country’s brutal civil war. Years later, at the age of 35, he was diagnosed with colon cancer. The artist’s interdisciplinary practice often refers to these experiences of exile and illness, migration and healing, identity, and displacement. Essentially autobiographical, his work also draws upon pre-Columbian mythologies, Indigenous traditions, collective memory, geopolitical history, and material culture.
Maravilla will also offer a series of healing sound baths to coincide with the opening weekend of the exhibition. After he was introduced to sound therapy, a healing practice that uses vibrations produced by gongs, sound baths form an important part of his artistic practice, creating an immersive and healing landscape within his installations.
Sound Botánica forms part of the Lise Wilhelmsen Art Award Programme, which is presented bi-annually and intended to mark a significant milestone in an artist's career. The award programme presents 100,000 USD in prize money to a distinguished artist whose work will inspire and motivate future generations to active participation and social responsibility, and also includes a dedicated exhibition and an acquisition budget. Guadalupe Maravilla is the second artist to receive the award, which was inaugurated in 2019 with Otobong Nkanga as its first recipient.
The exhibition runs from Friday, 18 March to Sunday, 7 August 2022.
