Gender Bias, Compulsory Conformity,and a Duty to be Ungovernable in Latinx and Chicana Art

           Women, especially women of color, have long been overdue for their representation and recognition in art. Woman artist is a term that has been scrutinized for its usage in the field, indicating an innate otherness from that of the use of “artist” alone. Which by default is attributed to a man. When confronted with this dualism, there are two options: conform or rebel. Feminist thinker Nancy Tuana asserts in her text Women and the History of Philosophy that when reading and interpreting philosophy, man is assumed to be the gender-neutral baseline from which women must place themselves alongside the man or elsewhere.[1] This theory can also be applied to how women artists interpret their work. In this essay, I will explore the thought-provoking and controversial artwork of Latinx and Chicana artist Alma López, analyzing her work in the context of assumed gender biases. I will dissect her work and the agency of the symbols used in her interpretations of culturally significant iconography and make a case for her work as reflective, relevant, and necessary. Through this exploration of her oeuvre and the origins of practices and spirituality illustrated in her body of work, I will analyze the gender oppression and patriarchal essentialism that attempted to silence López and her work into submission—ultimately revealing the importance of elevating not only women in the arts, but also the voices, experiences, and stories of BIPOC women artists as we move forward into a more inclusive and intersectional telling of the canon of art and art history.

            The cult of “true womanhood,” is colloquially understood as a woman in the role of the terminal caretaker and ultimate mother, is seen as the end-all for a woman of virtuous means. To shun any pursuit of self-satisfaction and happiness outside of a husband and family is considered against the values of a desirable woman. This idyllic view of what it means to be a woman, constructed by patriarchal systems to control the narrative of women, can be seen throughout the art world in excess and perpetuates an essentialist view of women. Alma López, in her work, uses these idyllic cultural narratives heavily drenched in patriarchy and machismo to reclaim, reassess, and rediscover her connection with her femininity and form a relationship with her spirituality outside of hegemony.

            Hegemonic cultures of the West, at least beginning with ancient Greek dualism[2], and particularly with the emergence of patriarchal Judeo-Christianity and its imperial expansion to las América’s during colonialism, have separated the “body” from the “soul” and the sexual from the spiritual, privileging the latter.[3] The Christian subordination of the flesh (typically gendered feminine) to the soul (typically gendered masculine) is reaffirmed and multiplied with the “disenchantment” of modernity traced to Enlightenment thinkers who claimed that true knowledge was derived from reason by the rational self and not necessarily from “s/Spirits.”[4] This can be interpreted in the Western vision of privileging the mind over the body and thus perpetuating a hegemonic dualism that has been utilized as a mode of oppression and negative understanding of the constructs of that which is female. When not oppressively represented as spirituality superior to men (for example, the belief that women should emulate the Virgin Mary as the sacrificing pious mother), women’s non-institutional spiritualities and healing knowledge have often been negatively coded as heretical, witchcraft, or primitive by Eurocentric des/conocimientos (ignorance of knowledge). [5] Such Ideologies – the hyper-spiritualization, intellectual infantilization, and bruja-ization of women reaffirm the gendered and racialized spirituality/sexuality binary.[6]

López uses such iconography and semiology in her digital collage murals. She often re-contextualizes historical narratives, repositioning and reformulating Mexican figures to imagine a world in which she sees herself, her queerness, and her femininity represented. López’s work is part of a larger tradition within Chicana artistic practice that seeks to overturn the patriarchal ideologies attached to many Mexican cultural and religious icons and motifs.[7] By appropriating these symbols and images, Chicana artists subvert and deconstruct the systems of power that have historically oppressed women of color.[8] The controversy surrounding Alma’s work is unsurprising as it tells of the nature of oppression that disenfranchised and oppressed persons face, resulting in the marginalization of such people and their communities.

Artworks such as López’s are a direct result of the Chicana movement in which women often reimagined these cultural icons and, by doing so, re-imagined their own identities regarding race, gender, politics, and sexuality. They were no longer content to merely be wives, sisters, mothers, and daughters of the Chicano cause; they were forging a personal subjectivity that could express the diverse totality of the Chicana experience.[9]

The Virgin de Guadalupe (fig. 1) is almost synonymous with Mexican/Chicano culture and visual iconography. She is illustrated on the sides of cars, leather jackets, and candles and is often seen in unsuspecting places like burnt toast. Her importance compounds her demeanor by being shown in apparition form to an indigenous man, Juan Diego (Cuauhtlatoatzin). She is the pious and demure mother, draped in her sorrow, embodying the suffering of Chicano/ Mexican experiences at the hands of colonization, systemic racism, and ethnogenocide. The Virgin de Guadalupe is a polyvalent sign that can convey multiple and divergent meanings and be deployed by different groups for contradictory political ends.[10]  This virgin/whore dichotomy is represented in the Américas by the Virgin de Guadalupe as a spiritually pure mother, and La Malinche as a physically defiled concubine, is a foundational theme in Chicana feminist thought along with this dichotomy’s adverse effects in the development of female subjectivity. [11] Progressive movements have also carried the image of the Virgin de Guadalupe to signify resistance to colonization and economic exploitation.[12] It is a direct result of this ubiquity and polyvalence; the image of Guadalupe is ripe for semiotic appropriation and cultural transformations.

In her 1999 digital collage Our Lady (fig. 2), López reimagines and breaks apart the traditional narrative of the sorrowful mother figure and re-aligns the Virgin de Guadalupe, making manifest the desire, queerness, and sexuality latent in the attachment to the icon. The artist was inspired to create this version of Guadalupe after reading a short essay called “Guadalupe the Sex Goddess” by Sandra Cisneros, in which the author expresses curiosity about what she is wearing under her robes—Alma’s response: roses. Roses were the sign given by her to Juan Diego as material proof of her apparition. López wanted to reclaim the Virgin de Guadalupe and how she saw her: muscular, sexual, and fearless.

In Alma López’s controversial Our Lady (fig. 2), López reconfigures the dynamic of the Virgin de Guadalupe, exposing her feminist and queer potential. Referring to the “original” image of La Virgen de Guadalupe (fig. 1) in her image, López features an image of Latina performance artist and model Raquel Salinas. Standing on a dark crescent moon, Salinas is enshrouded not in a teal cloak of constellations but in relief imagery of the Aztec goddess Coyolxauhqui, the rebellious daughter. The angel holding up the crescent moon has been replaced with buxom images of Latina (Raquel Gutiérrez) superimposed over a viceroy butterfly. The viceroy butterfly is a recurring theme in López’s art practice, which resembles and mimics that of the monarch butterfly. This play of recognition, suggested by the metaphor of the viceroy, is used as a device representing queer Chicano/ subjects, forgoing the possibility of recognition to survive and instinctually mimicking the poisonous monarch.[13] Behind Salinas is the design of the “original” Virgin de Guadalupe’s robes, illustrating the floral intertwining of the flowery hills, which represent the Christian paradise when she makes flowers blossom atop the barren grasses of Tepeyac Hill. Encircled by the sun's rays, the divine light beams gently touch Salinas's skin. Standing contrapposto and directly opposing the “original,” the figure looks and shares a gaze with the viewer. Bathed in roses and wearing only that of a bikini of roses, the figure demands attention and respect.

            As one might expect, this reimagining of such an iconic figure has been controversial, inciting demonstrations, protests, and community outrage, often citing that the work was a hyper-sexualization of a religious figure, describing the artwork as a depiction of “the Virgin of Guadalupe in a bikini.” Chicano nationalists attempted to maintain control over the meaning of the Virgin de Guadalupe and contain her within the semiotic structure of the Catholic Church.[14] Considering this, it is no wonder that Our Lady is controversial, as it suggests that brown women can be honorable and respectable and can claim for themselves their own identities and heritage without subjugation or denial of the physical experiences of being a woman in the wake of ethnogenocide, dualisms, and performative/compulsory heteronormativity and gender bias. If a sexually aware Virgen de Guadalupe treads on the sensibilities of the conservative audience, then the representation of a possibly lesbian Virgen, the epitome of unreserved sexuality, must be twice as dangerous, no longer a chaste and sexual mother but an active subject narrating her own experience.[15]

            The emergence of the indigenous devotion to Guadalupe-Tonantzin, described in Irene Lara’s dissertation, is described as a way for the indigeneity to persevere and to spiritually take themselves back from the onslaught of Christian colonialism and maintain indigenous elements by appropriating Christian structures as their own calling the movement “the movement of Guadalupe… as [an] oppositional movement,” influenced by messianic movements by indigenous prophets, Guadalupe-Tonantzin is regarded as a “captured goddess” who maintains the “essence of the [indigenous] people.”[16] Because spirituality is understood as having political effects and as historically construed, Christianity is criticized in some artwork for its role in the Inquisition, the genocide of Native Americans throughout the continent, the persecution of folk or Indigenous healers as satanic, and the extension and reproduction of Eurocentrism, patriarchy, and compulsory heterosexuality.[17]

By critically recentering these feminine cultural narratives and spiritual practices centered also on indigeneity, Alma López’s work is changing the narrative by exploring and investigating traditional narratives perpetuated by colonizers. By hyphenating, La Virgen is now visually regarded as honoring the polyvalence of Guadalupe. Tonantzin is remarked to be a human mother figure and earth-mother essence. She is often regarded with Mesoamerican feminine earth energy, celebrating indigenous practices' origins and deidentification.[18] Therefore, it could be argued that López, in her practice of realizing her vision of Guadalupe, honored not only her indigeneity but also her ancestors by appropriating already misappropriated images by colonization tactics and directly honored her heritage, femininity, and spirituality by making such a controversial and influential image. It is in this act of defiance against the gender bias and hegemony that controls under patriarchal rule that López challenges in her work.

Speaking on her work, Alma López says that when she sees Our Lady (fig. 2) and the works portraying the Virgen by many Chicana artists, she sees alternative voices expressing the diversity of lived realities and traditions. She notes that in the creation of Our Lady, she sees that because of cultural and gendered oppression, she felt the need to assert her voice, co-creating alongside other Chicana artists a deep and meaningful connection to such a revolutionary and artistic female image.[19] On the controversy surrounding her work, describing Our Lady as blasphemous and heretical, López wonders how these men and subscribers to essentialism and patriarchal ideologies view women’s bodies. Questioning their self-imposed legitimacy on the topic, López demands explanations for the singularity imposed on her and her art practice, which lay claim to the cultural icon and definitions of a woman.

In an essay, Suzanne Lacy writes, “Art is a potential link across differences." She discusses the discrepancy between what we see in social representations of women and the self-awareness generated from the experience of being a woman, which has provoked skepticism and critique. She notes that this realization resulted in people displaying multiple versions and personalities, experimenting with real and illusionary facades, transforming themselves through self-portraiture, and changing their perception of themselves and, quite possibly, how we were expected to perceive them. Further solidifying that gender and gender roles are merely illusions perpetuated by mass societal constraints and are unrefutably up for constant revision and reimagining. Feminist art is one of the catalysts used to disrupt and question oppressive and systemic institutions that aim to confine artists' experiences like López by ignoring the heritage kept alive in their work.

This juxtaposition of traditional iconography and images transcribed visually with queer femininity and sexual overtones is an overt artistic technique and exploration of inclusivity and intersectionality of identities rather than one of the exclusionary histories. By visually describing and honoring her Mexican and Chicana heritage, Alma López venerates the contemporary Chicana lesbian identity.[20] Aware of the criticalness that gender and sexuality have in the oppression, disenfranchisement, and ethnogenocide of marginalized persons and people of color, López’s identity as a queer Chicana represents more than a sexual orientation but a political one that challenges essentialist and static notions of identity.[21] It is how we talk about this apparent hierarchical duality in modern discussion as intersectional feminism becomes the norm for explaining our experiences as women; therefore, work such as López’s becomes tantamount to understanding how and why we continue to express ourselves visually and how women have attempted to regain control and assert the experiences of their narratives throughout history.

(fig. 1)

La Virgen de Guadalupe, 1531, Mexico City

(fig. 2)

Our Lady, Alma López, 1999, Digital Collage

Bibliography

Anzaidúa, Gloria and Cherrie Moraga, eds. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. 1981. 40th Anniversary Edition, SUNY Press 2023.

Calvo, Luz. “Art Comes for the Archbishop.” Meridians 19, no. S1 (December 1, 2020): 169–95. https://doi.org/10.1215/15366936-8565946.

Cooper, Sarah E. “Bridging Sexualities: Cherríe Moraga’s ‘Giving up the Ghost’ and Alma López’s Digital Art.” Confluencia 18, no. 2 (2003): 67–82. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27922910.

Gaspar, Alicia, and Alma López. Our Lady of Controversy. University of Texas Press, 2011.

Graham, Helen. Soul Medicine. NewLeaf, 2001.

Herrera-Sobek, María, Guisela M. Latorre, and Alma Lopez. “DIGITAL ART, CHICANA FEMINISM, and MEXICAN ICONOGRAPHY: A Visual Narrative by Alma Lopez in Naples, Italy.” Chicana/Latina Studies 6, no. 2 (2007): 68–91. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23014501.

Lara, Irene. Decolonizing Latina Spiritualities and Sexualities, 2003.

———. “Goddess of the Américas in the Decolonial Imaginary: Beyond the Virtuous Virgen/Pagan Puta Dichotomy.” Feminist Studies 34, no. 1/2 (2008): 99–127. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20459183.

Lassman, Peter, Irving Velody, and Herminio Martins. Max Weber’s “Science as a Vocation.” Taylor & Francis, 2023.

Lopez, Alma. “Maria de Los Angeles; Pre-Columbian and Post-Conquest Goddesses; ¿Qué Esconde La Esperanza?/What Is Hidden in Hope?; ¿Qué Esconde La Esperanza?/What Is Hidden in Hope? (Detail).” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 20, no. 1 (1999): 80. https://doi.org/10.2307/3346987.

Lopez, Almá. Silencing Our Lady: La Respuesta de Alma. Vol. 26. Aztlán, 2001.

PérezLaura E. Chicana Art: The Politics of Spiritual and Aesthetic Altarities. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007.

“Santa Fe Madonna Sparks Firestorm: An Illustrated Quarterly Magazine.” Art in America. 89, no. 6 (2001).

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Tuana, Nancy. Woman and the History of Philosophy. Paragon Issues in Philosophy, 1992.

[1] Nancy Tuana, Woman and the History of Philosophy (Paragon Issues in Philosophy, 1992), 2–8.

[2] Helen Graham, Soul Medicine (NewLeaf, 2001).

[3] Anzaidúa, Gloria and Cherrie Moraga, eds. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. 1981. 40th Anniversary Edition, SUNY Press 2023.

[4] Peter Lassman, Irving Velody, and Herminio Martins, Max Weber’s “Science as a Vocation” (Taylor & Francis, 2023).

[5] Irene Lara, Decolonizing Latina Spiritualities and Sexualities, 2003.

[6] Irene Lara, Decolonizing Latina Spiritualities and Sexualities, 2003.

[7] María Herrera-Sobek, Guisela M. Latorre, and Alma Lopez, “DIGITAL ART, CHICANA FEMINISM, and MEXICAN ICONOGRAPHY: A Visual Narrative by Alma Lopez in Naples, Italy,” Chicana/Latina Studies 6, no. 2 (2007): 68–91, https://www.jstor.org/stable/23014501.

[8] María Herrera-Sobek, Guisela M. Latorre, and Alma Lopez, “DIGITAL ART, CHICANA FEMINISM, and MEXICAN ICONOGRAPHY: A Visual Narrative by Alma Lopez in Naples, Italy,” Chicana/Latina Studies 6, no. 2 (2007): 68–91, https://www.jstor.org/stable/23014501.

[9] Sarah E. Cooper, “Bridging Sexualities: Cherríe Moraga’s ‘Giving up the Ghost’ and Alma López’s Digital Art,” Confluencia 18, no. 2 (2003): 67–82, https://www.jstor.org/stable/27922910.

[10] Luz Calvo, “Art Comes for the Archbishop,” Meridians 19, no. S1 (December 1, 2020): 169–95, https://doi.org/10.1215/15366936-8565946.

[11] Irene Lara, “Goddess of the Américas in the Decolonial Imaginary: Beyond the Virtuous Virgen/Pagan Puta Dichotomy,” Feminist Studies 34, no. 1/2 (2008): 99–127, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20459183.

[12] Luz Calvo, “Art Comes for the Archbishop,” Meridians 19, no. S1 (December 1, 2020): 169–95, https://doi.org/10.1215/15366936-8565946.

[13] Luz Calvo, “Art Comes for the Archbishop,” Meridians 19, no. S1 (December 1, 2020): 169–95, https://doi.org/10.1215/15366936-8565946.

[14] Luz Calvo, “Art Comes for the Archbishop,” Meridians 19, no. S1 (December 1, 2020): 169–95, https://doi.org/10.1215/15366936-8565946.

[15] Sarah E. Cooper, “Bridging Sexualities: Cherríe Moraga’s ‘Giving up the Ghost’ and Alma López’s Digital Art,” Confluencia 18, no. 2 (2003): 67–82, https://www.jstor.org/stable/27922910.

[16] Irene Lara, Decolonizing Latina Spiritualities and Sexualities, 2003. Via a personal interview with Herrera Rodriguez, 20 February 2001.

[17] Pérez Laura E, Chicana Art : The Politics of Spiritual and Aesthetic Altarities (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007).

[18] Irene Lara, Decolonizing Latina Spiritualities and Sexualities, 2003.

[19] Almá Lopez, Silencing Our Lady: La Respuesta de Alma, vol. 26 (Aztlán, 2001), 249–67.

[20] Sarah E. Cooper, “Bridging Sexualities: Cherríe Moraga’s ‘Giving up the Ghost’ and Alma López’s Digital Art,” Confluencia 18, no. 2 (2003): 67–82, https://www.jstor.org/stable/27922910.

[21] xMaría Herrera-Sobek, Guisela M. Latorre, and Alma Lopez, “DIGITAL ART, CHICANA FEMINISM, and MEXICAN ICONOGRAPHY: A Visual Narrative by Alma Lopez in Naples, Italy,” Chicana/Latina Studies 6, no. 2 (2007): 68–91, https://www.jstor.org/stable/23014501.