Tag Archives: alma lopez

Chicana Art: “Breaking the Taboo on Sexuality”

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Latorre: Cultivated from a cultural group that initially wrote off gender and sexuality issues as specific to Anglo Americans, the innovative Chicana movement does not have nearly enough scholarly visibility as it should.

Lopez:  Lopez evokes the experiences of latina women through modernizing the Virgen de Guadalupe in her digital print entitled Our Lady.

After reading both pieces by Latorre and Lopez along with doing some more outside research of my own, I found the initial ambivalence of Chicana artists to identify with the feminist movement interesting.  A particular passage in Latorre’s piece comes to mind when thinking about this quandary: “Concerns over gender and sexuality were either relegated to the margins or completely silenced.  Many activists at the time, both male and female, held the perception that these were Anglo-American issues that would divide el movimiento and dilute its political effectivemness.” Latorre p.12

However, in the first few pages of Lopez’s piece Silencing Our Lady, we see that this belief is proven to be wrong.  In fact, it seems as though the activists use the excuse of political dilution to mask their real concern of bringing the issues of gender and sexuality within the community to light.  Unsurprisingly, we see this represented in the violent attitudes of men toward young women in reaction to the digital mural that portrayed female residents of the Estrada Courts Housing Projects entitled Las Four (below).

Source: http://www.rowan.edu/artbytes/abnhtm/art/alma.htm

Lopez’s digital piece Our Lady, which features a more contemporary, sexualized version of the Virgen de Guadalupe also sparked an intense debate spear headed mostly by male religious leaders.  Because this piece accentuates female strength and freedom through such an iconic religious figure, we see (as we did in the reaction to her Las Four piece) patriarchy’s attempt to censor and stifle anything that is not dominated by, or pleasing to men.

Being Latina and a woman: Otherness in the Latino-American Culture and the mainstream art world

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Sentences

Alma Lopez: Lopez speaks as an artist and a scholar about her most controversial piece, a digital print, Our Lady which was adamantly protested by officials of the Catholic Church because of it’s redefinition of the Virgen de Guadalupe in order to address the experience of Latina women.

Guisela M. Latorre: This brief article highlights the importance of and lack of emphasis on feminism during the Chicana/o artistic movement, and also on the invisibility of Latina/o artists in art historical scholarship.

Response

These articles about Latina and Chicana artists opened the discussion of this course particularly in talking about artists beyond the African Diaspora. I found each of these articles especially fascinating, because as someone who has a great interest in African-American artists, it is not often that I get the chance to learn about Latina and Latino artists beyond Diego Rivera and Frida Khalo. I sincerely appreciated Alma Lopez’s discussion of the origins of her reinterpretation of the Virgen de Guadalupe, entitled Our Lady. I thought the beginning of her argument that revolved her participation in the Caesar Chavez Walkathon in which she saw murals in East Los Angeles that feature male heroes in the greater Latino community but no female heroines. Or the protest of Our Lady conducted predominantly by males who did not have any understanding of how the Virgen de Guadalupe connects to Lopez or other women Latina or not. I think this provides an explanation for the nature of Lopez work, which explores depictions of the female Latina body in the guise of colonialism and sexism.

The discussion of how Latina women were represented in mainstream Latino, Latino-America and American culture as opposed to Lopez’s depiction relates directly to Lopez and Latorre’s critiques of institutions such as art museums and spaces of higher education. Lopez describes how Our Lady was part of a show in Los Angeles at UC Irvine and was not questioned however New Mexico the digitally modified image caused a great ruckus. In the Author’s Note, Lopez explains how Tom Wilson, director of the New Mexico Museums, supported her piece and museums as institutions that should promote learning that requires challenging audiences to contemplate artwork outside of their comfort zone. Latorre also discusses notions of the problem with spaces that privilege art historical study which is often constituted by scholars who may not fully understand the narrative of the artist’s background. I thought Latorre’s mention of bringing non-white artists into the scholarship of art history was brilliant.

Have the Political Movements Taken Their Dose of the Artistic Supplement?

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“Chicana Art and Scholarship on the Interstices of Our Disciplines”, Guisela Latorres: The Chicana art movement tackled issues ignored by the political movement, such as gender, colonialism, and sexuality
“Silencing Our Lady: La Respuesta de Alma”, Alma Lopez: Our Lady stood as visual imagery provoking discussion about the gender relations, art, and religion of Chicana/o culture

Blog:
In class last week, we engaged in a skype conversation with Professor Leigh Raiford on her extensive work and our class material. At one point in the conversation, when she addressed the Black Civil Rights movement, she mentioned that “We don’t need another male leader like Malcolm or Martin; but an inclusive space for the diverse African diaspora.” I interpreted this to mean that the existing male leaders and patriarchal views are not necessary for the progress of the political movement. What is necessary is the acknowledgment of diverse identities within the movement. I found that her idea can also be applied to the Chicana/o movement that we are exploring this week. In the article “Chicana Art and Scholarship on the Interstices of Our Disciplines,” Guisela Latorres acknowledges that the Chicano/a political movement promoted nationalism, el movimento, and addressed issues of race and class within the ethnic group; but it ignored the topics of gender and sexuality within the community. Chicana artists, such as Alma Lopez, Juana Alicia, and Irene Perez, use their work to address these silenced subjects head on and provoke discussions on such controversial topics. These artistic female leaders mark a certain relationship between political movements and their corresponding artistic movements. Often the political movements, like Raiford tries to explain, take on a patriarchal perspective, addressing the shared marginalization of the group but ignoring the internal marginalization of women and other identities. This approach acknowledges the common identity of the ethnic group, rather than acknowledging the diversity of identities within the movement. Artistic movements, such as the Chicana art movement, tackle difficult subject matters which the patriarchal perspective of the political movement overlooks. In such a way, artistic movements supplement the progress of the corresponding political movement as a reaction to its ignorance. The irony of this situation is too hard to ignore as political movements attempt to address the ignorance of others yet ignorance can still exist in a political movement. Not all hope is lost as long as political movements take their dose of corresponding artistic movements, prescribed by Dr. Hinds.

Silenced No More!

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Lopez: This essay expresses Alma Lopez’s attempt to give voice and visibility to Latinas through her portrayal of the Virgen de Guadalupe as a “contemporary Latina.”

Latorre: By placing women at the center of visual discourses and exploring sexuality in art, Chicana artists unveiled sexual and gender diversity within the Chicana/o community.

Similar to our past readings of how the Black Panthers and African-American artists used visual imagery to empower the African-American/Black community, Lopez and other Chicana artists used this medium to represent the gender and sexual diversity within their communities as well. In “Silencing Our Lady,” Alma Lopez uses digital art to fight gender and cultural oppression through her contemporized version of the Virgen de Guadalupe. Despite Lopez’s brilliant attempt, Our Lady received criticism from a predominately male audience (with the exception of older women) because of the Virgen’s “exposed legs, belly, and [….] breasts” which, according to New Mexico’s Archbishop Michael J. Sheehan, classified it as “sacrilegious” (251). I, too, disagree with Archbishop Sheehan’s and other critics’ criticisms of Our Lady because I find it to be an image of women empowerment due to the confidence portrayed by the woman through her hands-on-hip posture, chin-up facial expression, and stern gaze. Even the Virgen’s cape-like attire screams strength and power to the audience. Additionally, the fact that the Virgen is being upheld by another woman also signifies strength in the absence of a male figure. Ultimately, the reason that protestors view the image of the Virgen as a “threat to masculinity” is because it disrupts the cycle of oppression that continues to manifest through the ignorance created by the censorship of the patriarchy.

Another interesting fact to note is the protest of the older women against Our Lady because it exposes the generational differences of values among women, which can be a symbol of the new generation breaking away from the restraint of male dominance. I also find the protestors’ demand to remove the image unsettling because it undermines the ability that viewers have to think for themselves.

Overall, such negative views of Our Lady call into question how we view women’s bodies. So often in art and media, women’s bodies are perceived as objects used to satisfy the male gaze and cater to the desires of men. This recurring representation of women is a problem. Why can’t a woman’s body be seen as admiration of a God-given gift, natural beauty, a nurturer of life, or a call for women to develop self-love and love the skin that they are in?