WK3: Eclipse, Yolanda M. Lopez

Yolanda M. Lopez’s Eclipse is a mixed-media collage, from the Guadalupe series from 1981. According to the text, Lopez was not content with the “popular images within Mexican American communities and those promoted by the media (82).” Lopez proposed multiple representations of the Mexican American community and more specifically those of women through the images of La Virgen de Guadalupe in many of her artwork pieces shown in the Guadalupe series. There a multiple of the same image in Eclipse possibly demonstrating the complexity of the Mexican-origin woman. Mexican women are not what the media tends to romanticize and mock. The Mexican woman is not just a virgin, a whore, or a mother, we are much more complex than that. Aside from this particular piece, I admire Yolanda’s artistic flexibility in representing a dynamic Mexican woman. Davalos explains that the eclipsing image of Saturn on the bottom of the collage represents how ‘the Mayan woman , “a real mother,” eclipses Our Lady of Guadalupe (83).’ I believe that the placement of the frame which is not entirely focused on simply one image of the women on the collage is very significant to the image and emphasizes that there is not one universal definition of a Mexican-origin woman.