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Guadalupe Maravilla’s “Mariposa Relámpago"
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.
More information and creditsCredits
Director & Producer: César Martínez Barba. Executive Producer: Tina Kukielski. Series Producer: Nick Ravich. Editors: Lorena Alvarado, César Martínez Barba. Cinematography: Pete Quandt. Additional Photography: Joseph Cashiola, Sophia Feuer, Chris Goldstein. Sound: César Martínez Barba, Fivel Rothberg. Associate Producer: Andrea Chung. Assistant Curator: Jurrell Lewis. Color Correction: Shanna Maurizi. Soung-Design & Mix: Micah Garrido. Design & Graphics: Chips. Music: Micah Garrido.
Artwork & Archival Media courtesy: Guadalupe Maravilla
Thanks: Ballroom Marfa, Billy Dufala, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Daniel Marcellus Givens, Miralva Melo Swaby, Mariana Parisca, Hillary Ramos, Recycled Artist in Residency, Irlanda Vargas
© Art21, Inc. 2025. All rights reserved.
New York Close Up is made possible with support from Deborah Beckmann and Jacob Kotzubei, Jessica and Natan Bibliowicz, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, the Henry Nias Foundation, and individual contributors.
Closed captionsAvailable in English, German, Romanian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Italian
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Guadalupe Maravilla was born in 1976 in El Salvador and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He received a BFA from the School of Visual Arts and an MFA from Hunter College, City University of New York. Maravilla creates intricately layered paintings, large-scale sculptures, and therapeutic performances that draw from his personal history and Central American ancestry. Often resembling mythic creatures or ornate reliquaries, Maravilla’s works examine issues of migration, disease, and generational trauma, while creating new rituals for care, healing, and regeneration.
“The power of ‘Mariposa’ can be felt around the bus, but also inside of the bus. You can sit or lay on the bus and feel the vibration and the healing qualities that it has.”
Guadalupe Maravilla