Radio Contact

 
Laura Alvarez is very creative artist that uses her imagination to create a world so secretive and dangerous. It’s always a treat for me to have a back-story to the artwork, and Laura really delivers on Double Agent Sirvienta. The piece that I would like to respond to is that of the painting Radio Contact that portrays D.A.S as having difficulty connecting to headquarters as she looks disheveled. I believe that the sentiment for that piece is to express that she really can’t function in her role without having a mission or direction. Revealing that she is not really equipped to do the domestic work, her contract is really an allegiance to espionage.  I really enjoy these stories as they reveal that she refuses to come to terms with her position as a domestic servant. Yet I don’t think that is the underlying message of this character. I believe that this character is brave to put herself in the position to be able to infiltrate the affluent community in such a way that she makes herself invisible and yet threatening as she gathers secrets and turns the children of the subjects she spies on to follow through with her missions.

The character is deeper than that just like the real women who go out and use their services to contract work. They are more than just employees, they are mothers just like my own who also cleaned houses part time. My mother actively created connections made flyers and solicited work; it was her efforts that provided our household with extra income to help pay the bills. My mother always spoke to us, my sisters and I that cleaning houses was not going to be part of our futures, she would say that she was doing “this” so that we would not have to. So in reference to D.A.S I believe that she is also putting herself on the line so that she may make a ripple of change, to put the holders of her gathered knowledge at an advantage.