Week 3: Yolanda M. Lopez, Guadalupe: Victoria F. Franco (1978)

One of the many things that I admire from Yolanda M. Lopez's works is the ability she has to illustrate new forms of Chicana womanhood. Lopez challenges traditional gender constructions and oppressive social codes. Her images take the ordinary women in our lives and transpose onto them grace and power through the way she reimagines them. In the portrait Guadalupe: Victoria F. Franco (1978), Lopez depicts her grandmother. As a part of the Guadalupe series, this portrait signifies the future, and ultimately death. When I first glanced at this image, I was hit by sentimentality at the idea of my grandmother being the one sitting upon the cape and staring at me, just as Karen Mary Davalos assumed that one would do. Yet, the more I looked at it, the more I began to see what Davalos mentions that Lopez meant to articulate with this image. 

The portrait shows a skinned snake in Victoria's hands. This is meant to demonstrate that she has a control of knowledge and has begun her own rebirth. No longer is she held down by the patriarchy or by society. She has her own power and has since been liberated. How I connect this image to my elders, in particular my own grandmother, is that I can see that there is power in her and that there is a dignity there that I wish I could find out more about. I see the strength that she has considering the many ordeals she has faced and continues to deal with. I admire the woman that she is and the grace that she holds.