The work that I found most enticing and that called to me was the paintings Heaven and Hell and Heaven and Hell II. They were painted two years apart from each other the former in 1989 and the latter in 1991. In Heaven and Hell (1989) she presents two contrasting worlds: heaven and hell. In heaven she depicts a clique of people dancing carefree in a light-air environment. The people dancing have angle wings painted on them and they are accompanied by a "four-piece band" of musicians playing for them (57). Below this, hell is depicted featuring chained workers picking up stones among red-hot furnaces. In Heaven and Hell II (1991) Garza maintains the same concept and figures but expands both the worlds heaven and hell, heaven receives more dancers and hell receives more workers.
My interpretation of this images is drawn from my socialist attitudes and perceptions. In this images the juxtaposition between the two worlds, heaven and hell, is striking. The beat-down and suppressed vibe of the workers is hell is amplified by the leisure and care-free atmosphere of the dancers above. It is almost as the dancers and their happiness rests upon (figuratively and literally) the workers in hell. In this hyper-capitalist system in which we find ourselves in 2018, our care-free and liberal environments, where we have plenty of food and access to happiness and peace, rests upon the subjugation of workers in the fields, sweatshops, factories, maquiladoras that are found in the Global South. In that way this painting speaks to me in this political environment and globalized capitalist limbo I live in.
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