Guadalupe Maravilla & the Sound of Healing

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Does healing have a soundtrack?

Sculptor, performer, and sound healer Guadalupe Maravilla combines his personal experiences as a formerly undocumented immigrant and cancer survivor with ancient and indigenous knowledge to create new rituals for healing. An impressionistic and kaleidoscopic look at Maravilla’s multifaceted practice and biography, the film follows the artist as prepares his solo exhibition at Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, New York and conducts healing sound performances for his community.

From his Brooklyn studio, Maravilla recounts his personal journey as an unaccompanied minor fleeing the civil war in his native El Salvador and migrating through Central America to the United States. As an adult, Maravilla was diagnosed with colon cancer, which he considers a physical manifestation of the trauma he experienced as a child. During his radiation treatments, Maravilla was introduced to the sound bath, where participants are “bathed” in sound waves meant to encourage therapeutic processes. Struck by the healing potential of sound, Maravilla vowed to learn and share sound healing with others if he overcame cancer.

Back at Socrates Sculpture Park, Maravilla casts recycled aluminum into twisting coral-like forms to create the centerpiece of his exhibition. Titled Disease Throwers (#13, #14), these works are towering and totemic sculptures that are at once shrines and instruments, decorated with symbolic materials collected from the places Maravilla crossed as a child and activated through sound performance. Using gongs, singing bowls, conch shells, and other instruments, Maravilla hosts healing workshops for undocumented immigrants, cancer survivors, and those who have lost loved ones to cancer. “Having a community that has gone through similar experiences can be really empowering,” says Maravilla. “Making these elaborate Disease Throwers is not just about telling a story from my past, but it’s also about how this healing ritual can continue in the future, long after I’m gone.”

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