http://www.pocho.com/cartas/cartas3.html

CHECK OUT THIS ART CENSORSHIP STRUGGLE IN NEW MEXICO

AND VISIT ALMA LOPEZ'S SITE BELOW

From: RaGu76@aol.com

Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 23:03:55 EST

Subject: CHICANA ARTIST ALMA LOPEZ PUBLICLY DECRIED BY RELIGIOUS LEADERS 

For Immediate Release

CHICANA ARTIST ALMA LOPEZ PUBLICLY DECRIED BY RELIGIOUS LEADERS IN SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO OVER CONTROVERSIAL DEPICTION OF CULTURAL ICON. 

ARTIST COMMUNITY RESPONDS IN DEFENSE.

LOS ANGELES (March 28, 2001) - Acclaimed Los Angeles-based visual artist Alma Lopez plans to be in Santa Fe April 4th when the Museum of New Mexico Board of Regents meets to decide whether Lopez' piece, "Our Lady," will be removed from the Cyber Arte exhibit at the International Museum of Folk Art. 

"Our Lady" portrays the Virgen of Guadalupe as a strong woman dressed in roses and held by a nude female butterfly angel. The models in the image are performance artist Raquel Salinas and cultural activist Raquel Gutierrez. The image has created an uproar within Latino communities, church parishes and religious leaders. Archbishop of Santa Fe Michael J. Sheehan has called for removal of Lopez' piece from the Cyber Arte exhibit, and wishes controversial artists "would find their own symbols to trash and leave the Catholic ones alone."

Renowned artists, academics and activists have responded in defense of Lopez' creative freedom. Chicana writer and MacArthur Genius Award recipient Sandra Cisneros, whose essay "Guadalupe, the Sex Goddess" inspired the controversial piece, has written a letter of support for Lopez to the exhibit curator and director of the International Museum of Folk Art. 

This is not the first time Alma Lopez' work has elicited negative reaction. 

In November of 2000, Lopez displayed the digital mural "Heaven," sponsored by Galeria De La Raza, a San Francisco Latino arts gallery, which was vandalized.

The San Francisco Police Department and the community consider this act of vandalism a hate crime. 

Lopez was born in Sinaloa, Mexico and grew up in East Los Angeles. She is the recipient of a COLA (City of Los Angeles) Individual Artist Grant and a California Community Foundation Brody Fellowship for Visual Artists. She is a digital and public artist who has exhibited and lectured on her work all over the Southwest, including Plaza de la Raza/Los Angeles, Mexican Heritage Plaza/San Jose, and Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art/Austin, TX. Currently, she has work on exhibit at the University of California Museum of Art in Santa Barbara, the De Anza College Euphrat Museum in Cupertino, and Arte Americas in Fresno. Her work is about imagining an inclusive reality of the multiplicity of Latina identities.

For further information regarding publication or to set up interviews, please contact Raquel Gutierrez at (323) 868-5117 or RaGu76@aol.com.