Guadalupe Maravilla wins 2019 MAP grant for live performance

Guadalupe Maravilla, assistant professor of sculpture, has received a grant from the MAP Fund for his performance “3 Twelves (12/12/12),” to be held at Knockdown Center in Queens, New York. MAP selected Maravilla among dozens of grantees who seek to “interrogate marginalizing structures in the United States while asserting new possibilities for thriving interdependence.” Maravilla was also awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship for his work in April.

3 Twelves (12/12/12) will incorporate autobiographical storytelling and invented rituals in collaboration with thirty immigrant performers. The title 3 Twelves (12/12/12) refers to the date that Guadalupe Maravilla found out he/they had stage three colon cancer on December 12, 2012. Maravilla believes that the traumas of crossing the US/Mexico border as an unaccompanied child were contributing and exacerbating factors to getting cancer; the performance’s climax will be a verbal monologue in which Maravilla will explain how he/they came to this conclusion. In 1984, at eight years old, Maravilla immigrated alone to the United States from El Salvador in order to escape the Salvadoran Civil War. He was part of the first wave of unaccompanied undocumented children to come to the US from Central America. Maravilla became a US citizen at twenty-seven. Given the tenuous political climate, especially surrounding the issue of the US-Mexico border Maravilla believes it is urgent to start thinking about the traumatic consequences of migration. The performance will incorporate choreographed rituals, hand-made costumery, sound therapy, music, smell, and audience participation, and will take place at the Knockdown Center in Queens, New York.

Read the full MAP Fund announcement.