At the age of eight, Maravilla was part of the first wave of unaccompanied, undocumented children to arrive at the United States border in the 1980s as a result of the Salvadoran Civil War.
Maravilla often played on the steps of the pyramids in El Salvador and spent his early childhood drawing and creating sculptures.
The religious group played an essential part in helping his father recover from alcoholism and reemerge in the artist's life 20 years after disappearing.
[7] As an acknowledgement of his own migratory past, Maravilla grounds his practice in the historical and contemporary contexts of immigrant culture, particularly those belonging to Latinx communities.
Culling the entangled fictional and autobiographical genealogies of border crossing accounts, Maravilla nurtures collective narratives of trauma into celebrations of perseverance and humanity.
[11] Across all media, Maravilla explores how the systemic abuse of immigrants physically manifests in the body, reflecting on his own battle with cancer, which began in his gut.
The headdress contained a large solar reflector that reflected the sun's light, drawing the attention of Border Patrol agents.
[14] Maravilla has staged multiple large-scale performances incorporating hip-hop, theater, sculpture, sound, video, and photography.
Participants drew onto digital manipulations of the Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca (c. 1550), a colonial Mexican manuscript that combines Nahua pictorial writing with European conventions of the historical annal.
[19] In 2019 Maravilla began the series, Disease Throwers, free-standing mixed-media sculptures that reflect the various indigenous healing practices that the artist explored during a long bout with cancer.