Toward Sanctuary
Toward Sanctuary is a series of programs co-curated by Celine Wong Katzman and Dr. Gervais Marsh with Buffy Sierra, inspired by Guadalupe Maravilla’s artistic practice and upcoming Creative Time public art commission. Through collective action and imagination, Toward Sanctuary contends with the possibilities and difficulties of cultivating sanctuary across legacies of public and socially engaged art. The programming is informed by the history of sanctuary movements in the U.S. and Maravilla’s practice of building community-centered spaces for holistic wellbeing.
Creating sanctuary is rooted in an expansive history of dynamic practices, and is an ongoing aspiration. The need to reimagine and actively build spaces of refuge has never been more urgent during this time marked by escalating anti-immigrant violence, increasingly authoritarian global politics, and deepening socioeconomic inequities. Sanctuary emerges both through strategies invested in liberation and as a protective enclosure from harm–an offering to breathe, to heal, to envision radical alternatives, and to be connected with community.
Artists, cultural workers, organizers, and neighbors have nurtured and sought out sanctuary through practices and sites like independent schools, mutual aid collectives, community gardens, experimental art spaces, and modes of underground resistance. Toward Sanctuary programs will address the promise and limitations of the designation “sanctuary city” and consider the power and potential of networked communities that extend across arcs of history and beyond borders.
Starting in May 2026, Toward Sanctuary programs will take place at CTHQ, Creative Time’s gathering space for art and politics, and across other sites in New York City. Maravilla’s upcoming Creative Time commission, soon to be announced, will draw on his work across sculpture, sound healing, performance, and organizing in support of immigrant communities.
SCHEDULE
MAY-JULY
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MAY
We Keep Us Safe: Sanctuary Movements Past and Present
Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI), Dr. Lloyd Barba, and Cinthya Santos-Briones
Saturday, May 30 | 2–6 PM
JUNE
Rooted: Cultivating Sanctuary in the Mind and Body
TTA Healing Studio
Wednesday, June 10 | 6–8 PM
Sanctuary After Dark: Legacies of Queer Nightlife
Presented in collaboration with Body Hack
Alice O’Malley, Body Hack Collective, Julie Tolentino, Lola Flash, and more
Saturday, June 27 | 2-6 PM | Body Hack’s Pride Nonstop will continue all weekend long
JULY
Tending Sanctuary: Plants to the People
Herban Cura and collaborators
Thursday, July 16 | 6–8 PM
We Keep Us Safe: Sanctuary as Collective Practice
Reverend Juan Carlos Ruiz and Tania Bruguera
Wednesday, July 29 | 6–8 PM
SEPTEMBER-NOVEMBER
SEPTEMBER
Cat Sanctuary and Beyond: Structures of Our Shared Realms
Adrian Wong, Olivia LaBarre, and Wildlife Freedom Foundation
Wednesday, September 9 | 6–8 PM
OCTOBER
What We Sow: Food Sovereignty as Sanctuary
Linda Goode Bryant and Mary Mattingly
Wednesday, October 28 | 6–8 PM
Location to be announced (Rain Date: Thursday, October 29)
NOVEMBER
We Keep Us Safe: The Whores Feast
Red Canary Song and collaborators
Thursday, November 5 | 6–10 PM
Studies in Sanctuary
Christopher Rey Pérez, Kameelah Janan Rasheed and Timmy Simonds
Wednesday, November 12 | 6–8 PM
Sanctuary is a Revolutionary Act
Presented in partnership with The Clemente
Jamal Joseph, Máximo Rafael Colón and Dr. jah Elyse Sayers
November 18 | 6–8 PM
Free and open to the public at The Clemente
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS & COLLABORATORS
Toward Sanctuary programs will feature Adrian Wong, Alice O’Malley, Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI), Body Hack, Christopher Rey Pérez, Cinthya Santos Briones, Herban Cura, Dr. jah Elyse Sayers, Jamal Joseph, Julie Tolentino, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Linda Goode Bryant, Dr. Lloyd Barba, Lola Flash, Mary Mattingly, Máximo Rafael Colón, Olivia LaBarre, Red Canary Song, Reverend Juan Carlos Ruiz, Tania Bruguera, Timmy Simonds, TTA Healing Studio, Wildlife Freedom Foundation and more to be announced.
ABOUT GUADALUPE MARAVILLA
Guadalupe Maravilla is a transdisciplinary visual artist who combines sculpture, painting, performance, and installation. As an artist and healer, he combines pre-colonial Central American ancestry, personal mythology, and collaborative performative acts to trace the history of his own displacement and that of others. His work is autobiographical, referencing his migration to the United States due to the Salvadoran Civil War and explores how harsh systemic realities against immigrants physically manifest in the body. Maravilla’s work has been exhibited widely, with solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, and Socrates Sculpture Park. His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others.
Project Support
Toward Sanctuary programs and Creative Time’s CTHQ public programming space are made possible with visionary founding gifts from the Mellon Foundation, Booth Ferris Foundation, and the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation.
