I remember, when driving on the coast of Baja California to Ensenada a few years ago, I took a picture of a giant Virgin of Guadalupe statue on the hillside. After spending about 40 minutes looking for this photo I was incredibly disappointed to find that my memory failed me; it was really a statue of Jesus Christ.
As a non-Chicanx/Latinx or Catholic person, I have had few impactful experiences with the Virgin of Guadalupe and until taking this class had very little knowledge about her, other than that she was a Virgin Mary figure of the Latino community. I would often see her in restaurants, homes, shops, gas stations and cars. She was often in paintings, on candles, keychains and apparel.
I had originally seen Yolanda M. Lopez’s, The Guadalupe Series when looking through art archives of Mexican and Chicana artists online. I was looking for art to show some young (predominantly Latinx) students; Yolanda Lopez’s work was perfect. I love the way that she used this figure of Our Lady of Guadalupe to frame the beauty and importance of females in her (mundane) life. Additionally, I like the subversive use of the Virgin figure in the artworks by Alma Lopez. Growing up in a Christian household, born out of wedlock, my mother fostered a distaste for the hypocrisy of religion. She rejected the church. Thinking about it with the perspective of the whore/madonna dichotomy it makes sense why she would feel so strongly about this. Alma Lopez’s Our Lady reclaims the figure by giving her a different narrative- a narrative in which she is an uncovered queer body.
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