Laura Alvarez

Laura Alvarez's artwork incorporates a lot of who she is and her identity. She has been working with her Double Agent Sirvienta character for about 10 years now, and through her artwork we can see how she has evolved and been inspired by many aspects of Alvarez's life. Growing up in Newport Beach, she imagined stories about spies and imagined she was a spy herself. This would then inspire her to create DAS. Her mother worked as a housekeeper and this is how Double Agent Sirvienta came to be a sirvienta, because Alvarez would notice how these people would be practically invisible to the people they worked for, so they had a lot of access to information even if they were not aware of it.

I chose her painting I’m With my Nanny because it connects with what Blake writes about. She states “Chicana artists’ labor metonymically by the hand that paints or writes (and the tongue that speaks) into contemporary images that refigure patriarchal portrayals of women” (25). I’m With my Nanny is a painting that I see portraying women in a different way that they typically would be. We see a running Nanny who is on a mission and she looks powerful and determined. Not only is she “refiguring” women but also the women who have professions such as being a nanny.

I think that Alvarez’s use of identity and hidden identities is really interesting especially the notion of things not always being the way they seem or people being more than what they appear or beyond what they are/do. She takes occupations like sirvientas and jardineros, jobs usually looked down upon and complicates the characters more. She makes us realize that there are many layers to people and what we see is not the entire story. Her artwork is also empowering and acknowledges the power and agency that people who do these professions have.