Week 8: Presenter Image

For this week’s presentations, the artist that interested me most was Ester Hernandez. While I had heard about this artist before, it was interesting to gain insight on some of her other art. Initially, I was only aware of her 1975 karate-kicking Virgen de Guadalupe piece. When I first saw this piece, I remember thinking that Hernandez was a brave artist that definitely had a sense of humor. Re-figuring such a sacred icon of Mexican culture in a way that might be deemed sacrilegious might have been controversial and scary. In my opinion, Ester Hernandez is a Chicana who uses political and social elements in her artwork to create a larger conversation and facilitate action to seek change.

            Out of all three images I was shown during the presentation, my favorite one of Ester Hernandez’s was Wanted  (2010). When I got home after class, I wanted to research this image myself to read the description under the large image. While I got to see a picture of it in class, I wasn’t able to see what the words actually revealed. Since I know that Hernandez incorporates humor into her work, I was excited to learn about how she re-interpreted La Virgen in this more modern piece. Now that I have seen the art work close up, I think it is really funny how the Wanted poster labels the Virgen “powerful and dangerous” when in fact she is usually an icon of passivity and hope. However, to those who believe in La Virgen, the reason she has power and strength is because of her ability to lift spirits and send hope. Her power lies in her ability to aid people in times of need. I also think it is fascinating that Hernandez incorporated historical data into her piece, such as the date of birth being the day she appeared to Juan Diego and her birth location being Tepayac which is the location where she appeared. My favorite part of this piece is the words under her “criminal record”. The fact that it is a crime to “give limitless aid and comfort to unidentified suspects at the time of their death” is what makes this piece so powerful. Her sacred powers could be seen as a threat to those who want to oppress the people La Virgen is trying to uplift. Also, I learned that this piece is in response to the racial profiling issue that was occurring in Arizona. I think that labeling La Virgen as a terrorist when she obviously does not exist to terrorize people is similar to judging Mexican-Americans as criminals when they are innocent.