Guadalupe Maravilla’s Mariposa Relámpago

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Glowing softly in the West Texas desert night, artist Guadalupe Maravilla’s Mariposa Relámpago,  was once an ordinary school bus but is now a richly decorated, mobile site for remembrance and healing. Like much of the artist’s work, this piece commemorates and confronts the artist’s journey to the United States as an unaccompanied, undocumented minor fleeing civil war in El Salvador in the 1980s. Inspired by the ornate buses of his youth, the artwork is adorned with over 700 objects, ranging from healing instruments like gongs to personally symbolic objects like a pair of children’s shoes. 

Following Maravilla’s path from El Salvador to the United States, the bus stops along the way to serve as a multi-level stage for healing ceremonies conducted by the artist himself. While temporarily stationed along the US-Mexico Border in Marfa, Texas, Maravilla invites both the general public and the nearby border worker community to experience one such healing ceremony.  “I think everyone needs to heal something,” says Maravilla. “There’s a universal way of experiencing healing and it’s by using sound; everyone that’s alive feels it.”

This film was directed and produced by César Martínez Barba, filmed by Pete Quandt, and edited by Lorena Alvardo and César Martínez Barba.

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