Week 3: Shifra Goldman's Essay

Shifra Goldman’s essay discusses the Chicana/o art movement and it’s quest for self determined identity in the United States. Through art, Chicanas/os were able to counter oppression and exploitation. Artists took an affirmative stance to celebrate race, ethnicity, and class through their works. Goldman discusses various artists in her essay, including Yolanda Lopez, an artist that addressed issues related to social justice and increased women visibility within these struggles. Lopez encompassed race, ethnicity, and class in her Guadalupe series. She used figures of herself, her mother and grandmother as the protagonists of the works instead of the Virgin, representing a reflection of the Virgin in each of them and called attention to the traditional role of Mexican women. By creating this new image of the Virgin, this series shows Lopez’s search for social equality for women. This art piece challenges the idea of an ideal woman in the Mexican culture. The triptych includes her mother alongside a sowing machine. Karen Davalos, states in her book that Lopez’s parents migrated from Mexico to the United States. As a result, her mother and many other undocumented women were only offered positions in the following departments: sweatshops, seamstresses, housekeepers, and cooks. This image tells the audience that the women in the portrait are from working class. The roles of gender are also prevalent in her portraits; her grandmother holds a knife which represents fearlessness and strength. She fuses race and ethnicity by using the recurrent theme of La Virgen de Guadalupe. In various works, Lopez takes the Virgin through a number of permutations, including identifying the Guadalupe with the Aztec Earth goddess Tonantzin, modern Mexican Indian woman with child. Goldman also states, “It [La Virgen de Guadalupe] is a constantly repeated motif in artworks of all kinds, an affirmation of institutional and folk Catholicism.” She affirms racial pride by incorporating dark skinned indigenous figures in her artwork.