Shifra Goldman

In her essay “The iconography of chicano self-determination: race, ethnicity, and class”, art historian Shifra Goldman discusses how the Chicano art movement is characterized by the search of self-identity of the Chicanos/Chicanas who responds to the oppression by the dominant culture in the form of art, especially focusing on their race, ethnicity, and class. Goldman discusses works of artists such as Antonio Bernal, Yolanda Lopez, and many more in order to examine their take on the subject of self-identity of Chicanos/Chicanas. An image I would like to discuss by Yolanda M. Lopez is Margaret F. Stewart: Our Lady of Guadalupe (1978). This artwork is an image of Lopez’s own mother at work, where she sits behind a sewing machine and makes a cloak for herself. Lopez’s mother, Margaret, is depicted with a rotund body and Karen Mary Davalos from Yolanda M. Lopez states that “the portrait is thus intended as a new proposal for beauty, one that does not depend on glamour and youth, whiteness and leisure, thin and curvaceous bodies”. Davalos also states that the portrait also rejects “the passive and demure Guadalupe”. The portrait takes the image of her mother not as a depiction of Virgin de Guadalupe, but as an individual who has control over her own self.