Tierra Blanca Joven, Guadalupe Maravilla’s Cargo Cult of the Soul

Art Exhibit

May 8

The fascination many of us feel for modern traditions of indigenous inspired Latin American art is due to the powerful interplay of personal biographies, pre- and post-colonial histories, modern desires and temptations, religious traditions and the tragedy and hope of the human condition. That’s quite a lot …. and the richness of this artistic conversation gets expressed in an exuberant display of colors, artifacts, stories and magic.

Guadalupe Maravilla’s exhibit entitled Tierra Blanca Joven, is on view at the Brooklyn Museum until September 18, 2022, and it adds yet another layer of history and personality to the ever growing archive of works of this genre on public display. Some of the highlights of the exhibit are the painted tableaus realized by the painter Daniel Vilchis according to Maravilla’s direction, and the physically imposing and perhaps terrifying Disease Thrower #0, which consists of a large hammock and assemblage of objects which dominates one corner of the exhibition area.

painting — Guadalupe Maravilla, (born El Salvador, 1976) in collaboration with Daniel Vilchis, painter. *Volcan de Isalco Started Forming in 1722 Retablo*, 2022. Courtesy of the artist and P-P-O-W Gallery, N.Y.

Guadalupe Maravilla, (born El Salvador, 1976) in collaboration with Daniel Vilchis, painter. *When I Was 16 I Had the Opportunity to Go Back to El Salvador Retablo*, 2022. Courtesy of the artist and P-P-O-W Gallery, N.Y.

For us gringos, our awareness of this artistic tradition begins with the visual histories of Frida Kahlo and the Mexican muralists and the magical realism of authors like Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez and Carlos Castaneda, but the roots of this art go much further back as far as oral traditions and the stone legacies of pre-Columbian civilizations can take us. People today in those countries live in a world that mixes modern western culture and ancient traditions in ways that must be as confusing to them as it is rich and evocative. They believe in the physical power of the ancient legacy as much as they believe in the power of a Tesla automobile, even though they could probably not explain the workings of either one. It is as close as humans get to internalizing the basic dilemmas of culture and the inherent irony of all our modern expression. It is a cargo cult of the soul. No matter if the details are personally invented, if the histories have been skewered by all the subsequent events, that the future is a reinterpretation of the path. The truthfulness of this world is solid fact, and an aesthetic glory to behold.