Week 2: Personal Symbols

 I have often felt that it is natural for popular images--even powerful and spiritual ones--to be reinterpreted over time to accommodate the needs and values of an ever changing culture. The re-imaginings of la Virgen we saw by Chicana artists showed a lot of love for the image and character of la Virgen. No matter how widespread or institutionalized figures like la Virgen can become, our relationships with icons, symbols, and important figures are often deeply personal ones. I can understand how re-imagining such an important spiritual figure is a sensitive topic for many people, but seeing the idiosyncratic needs, voices and desires of the women artists who chose to re-depict la Virgen felt very special to me.

I didn't really grow up with any special images to my family or community. My family was often a-religious, sometimes Buddhist, with a-little-new-age-thrown-in mishmash. I moved frequently and often felt very lonely. When I was maybe two years old, I saw a stuffed bunny rabbit in my mom's Easter basket and it was love at first sight. As a child, I did not go anywhere without that bunny, and I really felt love and protection from him. The bunny became a part of how I identified myself, and how other people identified me. Of course as I grew older, I naturally became less attached with the stuffed rabbit himself, but bunnies became an important and personal symbol for me: one of intimacy, innocence and safety in a sometimes crazy world.

A few years ago he mysteriously disappeared, and I have not seen him since. I was very sad about losing my most personal symbol. It began to make me question why a material object could be so important, and why for so long as a child I felt he was so real. I realized it was because I had created him, and the love little-Skylar felt was love that I had created myself. I think that symbolic figures like la Virgen can be similar. Even though our relationship to personal symbols can change over a lifetime. We can question, modify, re-imagine, or even lose those symbols--but the special power they provided is always within us, and is ultimately is a reflection of ourselves.