Guadalupe Maravilla: Planeta Abuelx
Until 6 September at Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens
The latest presentation at Socrates Sculpture Park is by the Brooklyn-based Salvadoran artist Guadalupe Maravilla, addressing themes of migration, illness and holistic medicine, a subject the artist also explored in his recent show at PPOW in Tribeca. There are a series of installations across the five-acre park evoking ancestral knowledge, Mesoamerican symbolism, and botanical and sonic elements modelled after Indigenous cleansing and healing instruments. The large-scale sculpture
Disease Throwers (#13, #14) (2021) extend the artist’s series of vessels resembling shrines that are activated during in-person "sound bath" ceremonies. Through the duration of the show, the artist will hold several such free communal sound baths at the park, which he believes “helps balance emotional, psychological, and sometimes physical pain”, and were a crucial element of his own recovery from cancer.