Alma Lopez
Our Lady of Controversy, 2003
Serigraph, Edition 14 of 73
26 x 20 in.

Our Lady of Controversy is based on the 1999 digital print titled "Our Lady" that received international attention during an exhibition titled CyberArte: Tradition Meets Technology at the Museum of International Folk Art Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The exhibition, curation by the Chicana/Nuevo Mexicana scholar/art historian Tey Marianna Nunn, was created as a bridge/dialogue between the traditional cultural Latina/o, Mexicana/o, Hispana/o iconography, and new technologies. The four women artists Marion Martinez, Teresa Archuleta, Elena Baca, and Alma Lopez were selected because they combined traditional cultural iconography and new media/technology in their art.

The controversy to remove/censor the digital print "Our Lady" began soon after the exhibition opened on February 25, 2001. The protest was led primarily by three men (Jose Villegas, Deacon Anthony Trujillo, and Archbishop Michael J. Sheehan). After several rallies, much media attention, a few meetings, and physical threats to the artist, the curator, and the museum, the work remained until the exhibition closed in October 2001. The work was not removed thanks to the support to the swell support from diverse communities of Latina/os, women, students, professors, anti-censorship organizations, and countless others as well as the exhibiting artists, the governor, and the New Mexico Museum. It was an incredibly complex and difficult situation.

"Our Lady of Controversy" is based on this controversy. The two images are relatively the same with the exception that in this new image the female figure is wearing boxing gloves. The boxing gloves are not meant to be an aggressive gesture, but an assertive one. The statement I hope to make is that we all have a right to express ourselves, and may need to be prepared to defend that right.

This image was particularly difficult and stressful to make and therefore I am grateful to have Self Help graphics as a supportive creative space. I especially want to acknowledge the support of Joe, the master printer; Amos and Victor, the artists/printer assistant; Tomas, the director; the Raqueles, the models, and Lizette, my darling." Alma Lopez is a visual artist and currently, a visiting lecturer at UCLA. Over the last two decades, Lopez's work has been exhibited in over one hundred national and international solo and group exhibitions. In 1999, UCLA's La Gente Newsmagazine dubbed Alma Lopez the Digital Diva for her groundbreaking photo-based digital series Lupe and Sirena. That series, and most of Lopez's visual work, raises questions about popular Mexican icons filtered through a radical Chicana feminist lesbian lens. One of those images, titled Our Lady is the subject of the book Our Lady of Controversy: Alma Lopez's "Irreverent Apparition," which Lopez co-edited with her spouse, Professor Alicia Gaspar de Alba, and published by the University of Texas Press in 2011.