Our Lady of Controversy: Alma Lopez’s “Irreverent Apparition” (Chicana Matters)

Months before Alma Lopez’s digital collage Our Lady was shown at the Museum of International Folk Art in 2001, the museum began receiving angry phone calls from community activists and Catholic leaders who demanded that the image not be displayed. Protest rallies, prayer vigils, and death threats ensued, but the provocative image of la Virgen de Guadalupe (hands on hips, clad only in roses, and exalted by a bare-breasted butterfly angel) remained on exhibition. Highlighting many of the pivotal questions that have haunted the art world since the NEA debacle of 1988, the contributors to Our Lady of Controversy present diverse perspectives, ranging from definitions of art to the artist’s intention, feminism, queer theory, colonialism, and Chicano nationalism. Contributors include the exhibition curator, Tey Marianna Nunn; award-winning novelist and Chicana historian Emma Perez; and Deena Gonzalez (recognized as one of the fifty most important living women historians in America). Accompanied by a bonus DVD of Alma Lopez’s I Love Lupe video that looks at the Chicana artistic tradition of reimagining la Virgen de Guadalupe, featuring a historic conversation between Yolanda Lopez, Ester Hernandez, and Alma Lopez, Our Lady of Controversy promises to ignite important new dialogues.