La Bloga :: Our Lady of Controversy

Our Lady of Controversy

Edited by Alicia Gaspar de Alba

 and Alma López

Buy It Now

Review: Alicia Gaspar de Alba and Alma López, eds.
Our Lady of Controversy

by Michael Sedano

The first time I saw Alma López’s take on la Virgen de Guadalupe I laughed at the audacity of the finely crafted photograph. The artist has the goddess proclaim “when all your hieratic stuff is said and done, and you’ve prayed to and idolized me, remember this: I am a woman.”

The woman in López’s photograph poses arms akimbo, head tilted. Her face stares straightforwardly out, unsmiling lips expressing ‘what are you looking at?’ confidence.

Some viewers were looking outragedly at the figure’s floral bikini. Then the naked breasts of the putto at la Virgen’s feet. All Hell broke loose, propelling López to well-earned prominence among American artists, as well as enduring scorn from nattering whatevers.

At the time, López likened the scourging to a 21st century inquisition, cites Alicia Gaspar de Alba, in her introduction to her co-edited collection Our Lady of Controversy: Alma López’s Irreverent Apparition.

The eleven chapters include essays by López and Gaspar de Alba, as well as Tey Marianna Nunn, Kathleen Fitzcallaghan Jones, Deena J. González, Luz Calvo, Clara Román-Odio, Emma Pérez, Cristina Serna, Catrióna Rueda Esquibel.  Read more »

The OC Weekly :: Our Lady of Controversy

Our Lady of Controversy

Edited by Alicia Gaspar de Alba

 and Alma López

Buy It Now

Can a Gabacho Be More Mexican Than a Mexican?
[¡Ask a Mexican!] And why would an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe cause so much controversy?
By GUSTAVO ARELLANO

GOOD MEXICAN OF THE WEEK! A decade ago, Chicana artist Alma Lopez released Our Lady, a digital collage that depicted the Virgin of Guadalupe as a living, breathing woman wearing Her trademark green shawl, as well as a bikini made of flowers. It proved one of the most momentous artworks of this millennium, provoking equal parts praise and outrage by tapados. Its influence is recounted in the recently released Our Lady of Controversy, Alma López's Irreverent Apparition, a collection of essays from Chicana scholars on the subject complete with the chingona DVD, I Love Lupe, a short documentary on Chicana art's constant tweaks of the iconic Guadalupe image. Essential reading for art and Chicana/o Studies freaks alike! Read More »

Santa Fe New Mexican :: Our Lady of Controversy

Our Lady of Controversy

Edited by Alicia Gaspar de Alba
 and Alma López

Buy It Now

War of the Roses: 'Our Lady' 10 years on Casey Sanchez | The New MexicanThursday, May 05, 2011

Anybody living in Santa Fe in the spring of 2001 could scarcely forget her. She was called Our Lady, and she was clad in roses. Not enough of them, apparently.

She stood with arms akimbo, her face cocked defiantly, her back cloaked in an Aztec cloth, her chest and waist wreathed in a garland of roses that gloriously framed her toned midriff. A butterfly-winged, bare-breasted angel held her aloft.

She was artist Alma López's highly personal vision of the Virgen de Guadalupe, steeped in the urban spirituality of Mexican-immigrant Los Angeles, where La Virgencita may have been glimpsed outside of churches more often than inside — dangling as an air freshener from a rearview mirror, held aloft by civil rights activists at marches and protests, or adorning a mural on a street corner, where she terrified the daylights out of graffiti sprayers.  Read more »