num_pages: 408
description: In Alma Lopezs digital print Lupe &amp; Sirena in Love (1999) two iconsthe Virgin of Guadalupe and the mermaid Sirena who often appears on Mexican lottery cardsembrace one another symbolically claiming a place for same-sex desire within Mexican and Chicano/a religious and popular cultures. Ester Hernandezs 1976 etching Libertad/Liberty depicts a female artist chiseling away at the Statue of Liberty freeing from within it a regal Mayan woman and in the process creating a culturally composite Lady Liberty descended from indigenous and mixed bloodlines. In her painting Coyolxauhqui Last Seen in East Oakland (1993) Irene Perez reimagines as whole the body of the Aztec warrior goddess dismembered in myth. These pieces are part of the dynamic body of work presented in this pioneering lavishly illustrated study the first book primarily focused on Chicana visual arts.Creating an invaluable archive Laura E. Prez examines the work of more than forty Chicana artists across a variety of media including painting printmaking sculpture performance photography film and video comics sound recording interactive CD-ROM altars and other installation forms and fiction poetry and plays. While key works from the 1960s and 1970s are discussed most of the pieces considered were produced between 1985 and 2001. Providing a rich interpretive framework Prez describes how Chicana artists invoke a culturally hybrid spirituality to challenge racism bigotry patriarchy and homophobia. They make use of and often radically rework pre-Columbian Mesoamerican and other non-Western notions of art and art-making and they struggle to create liberating versions of familiar iconography such as the Virgin of Guadalupe and the Sacred Heart. Filled with representations of spirituality and allusions to non-Western visual and cultural traditions the work of these Chicana artists is a vital contribution to a more inclusive canon of American arts.
language: English
title: Chicana Art: The Politics of Spiritual and Aesthetic Altarities
publisher: Duke University Press Books