Collective Healing with Guadalupe Maravilla and Dr. LJ Punch

What it would mean to reset our understanding of health and well-being as an entire community, especially now? In this episode, artist Guadalupe Maravilla and trauma surgeon Dr. LJ Punch speak to the effects of untreated, unhealed trauma in the body. They explore deep connections between the body and the mind, between physical and spiritual realities, and the power of ancient and traditional medicinal practices from across the world. Ultimately, they advocate for the importance of bringing healthcare to the community and offering people better access to alternative ways of healing.

Guadalupe Maravilla is a transdisciplinary visual artist, choreographer, and healer. 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. In 2016, Maravilla became a US citizen and adopted the name Guadalupe Maravilla in solidarity with his undocumented father, who uses Maravilla as his last name. 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.

Dr. LJ Punch is an American critical care surgeon, an associate professor of surgery, and a scholar within the Institute for Public Health at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. Punch is also an activist in the fight against gun violence and directs StopTheBleedSTL, located at "The T" anti-violence center, which runs programs to educate the community on how to reduce the impact of trauma, injury, and violence in St. Louis. As a physician, educator, and activist, Punch aims to propagate the idea of “Radical Generosity” as means to better his community and the lives of those around him.

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As a major component of the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis's exhibition Stories of Resistance, Radio Resistance assembles the voices of intersecting local and global agents of change. Artists featured in the exhibition are paired with figures from the past, present, and future of St. Louis, coming together to transmit messages of dissent. Eleven episodes will be released over the course of the exhibition, amplifying shared struggles, collective dreams, and models of individual and group action. Using a historically rebellious medium, Radio Resistance broadcasts social narratives of defiance and hope.

Selections of Radio Resistance will be broadcast on St. Louis on the Air, the noontime talk program hosted by Sarah Fenske on St. Louis Public Radio. Full episodes will be released biweekly in a listening station at CAM, and on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher. A publication celebrating Stories of Resistance, featuring episode highlights, will be released later this year.