j.m. gonzalez
La Piel de Tonantzin (Suavecito Souldies Project). Oakland, CA, Winter 2021.
In 1989, Ester Hernandez produced an exquisite screen print at the National Chicano Screen Print Taller that resides in the canon of ChicanX art (and the Smithsonian American Art Museum). Her piece, La Ofrenda, became an empowering icon for Mexican American womanhood and queer subjectivity. It is evident that this icon transcends generations given how women of the new millennium proudly tattoo their bodies as if their skin was Juan Diego's very manta. Like the Hernandez piece, the tattoo in this photograph underscores a subversion of the late 20th / early 21st century ChicanX generation. It extends a decolonial critique, allowing the Aztec goddess Tonantzin exist as she is before her colonial cooptation. As an iconic piece of art, its main subject, Guadalupe or Tonantzin (as I identify her here), has become an archetype of successive ChianX generations' artistic vision. The photograph pales in comparison to Hernandez's "La Ofrenda" but as I grow artistically whenever the opportunity to re-create the image through the photographic medium presents itself, I can't pass it up.
Check out Ester Hernandez's "La Ofrenda" by visiting Dartmouth University's Hood Museum of Art's page: hoodmuseum.dartmouth.edu/news/2022/10/la-ofrenda-national...
La Piel de Tonantzin (Suavecito Souldies Project). Oakland, CA, Winter 2021.
In 1989, Ester Hernandez produced an exquisite screen print at the National Chicano Screen Print Taller that resides in the canon of ChicanX art (and the Smithsonian American Art Museum). Her piece, La Ofrenda, became an empowering icon for Mexican American womanhood and queer subjectivity. It is evident that this icon transcends generations given how women of the new millennium proudly tattoo their bodies as if their skin was Juan Diego's very manta. Like the Hernandez piece, the tattoo in this photograph underscores a subversion of the late 20th / early 21st century ChicanX generation. It extends a decolonial critique, allowing the Aztec goddess Tonantzin exist as she is before her colonial cooptation. As an iconic piece of art, its main subject, Guadalupe or Tonantzin (as I identify her here), has become an archetype of successive ChianX generations' artistic vision. The photograph pales in comparison to Hernandez's "La Ofrenda" but as I grow artistically whenever the opportunity to re-create the image through the photographic medium presents itself, I can't pass it up.
Check out Ester Hernandez's "La Ofrenda" by visiting Dartmouth University's Hood Museum of Art's page: hoodmuseum.dartmouth.edu/news/2022/10/la-ofrenda-national...