from personal to political

San José Museum of Art, San José

San José Museum of Art invited me to respond to the exhibition: “Yolanda Lopez, A Portrait of the Artist”

By questioning and deconstructing iconography and stereotypes we make space to consider other role models. We start our investigation by studying the work of Yolanda Lopez who, through her Guadalupe Series, takes an icon and intertwines personal and political narratives of feminine reality. In doing so she makes us confront our own mythologies and asks us to consider other measures of cultural value.

To further the work, I invited advanced printmaking students from SJSU to join me in creating matrices inspired in Lopez’s work. These matrices are brought to the San José Museum of Art where the public joins us in further activation, interpreting and combining the matrices in their own way(s) creating new personal narratives.

A three part art activation at the San Jose Museum of Art. Irene, along with artists Mariam Ibrahim, Morgan Spyksma, Mario Montes-Pozo, Maria de Hoyos, Dante Castaneda and Jo Sien created relief matrices in response to Yolanda Lopez’s exhibition. By questioning and deconstructing iconography and stereotypes we make space to consider other role models. We start our investigation by studying the work of Yolanda Lopez who, through her Guadalupe Series, takes an icon and intertwines personal and political narratives of feminine reality. By doing so she makes us confront our own mythologies and asks us to consider other measures of cultural value.

Matrices created by the fore-mentioned artists are brought to the San Jose Museum of Art where the public is invited to decontextualize, compose and print combining the matrices, in doing so create new narratives.