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Image Not Available for Lourdes
Lourdes
Image Not Available for Lourdes

Lourdes

Primary (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1946–Cuernavaca, Mexico and New York, New York, present )
Place MadeNew York, New York, United States, North America
NationalityAmerican, North America
Date2005
MediumCharcoal drawing and mixed media
DimensionsFramed: 64 1/2 x 44 1/4 in. (163.8 x 112.4 cm)
Credit LineBlanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Gilberto Cárdenas Collection, Gift of Gilberto Cárdenas and Dolores Garcia, 2023.68
Rights Statement
Collection AreaPrints and Drawings
Object number2023.68
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Not on view
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Lourdes is an homage to a domestic worker whom Antonia Guerrero employed in Mexico. The artist here embraces a frenetic physicality, using her entire body to compose this large-scale work. By sewing and interlacing mixed media and natural objects in addition to the diverse mark-making and drawing techniques she utilizes throughout her composition, Guerrero challenges our preconceptions about creativity. She bases the central image on a photograph of Lourdes, reframing the portraiture genre’s long legacy of memorializing the elite. Instead, Guerrero commemorates and immortalizes an everyday person as a reflection of the hidden, and often forgotten, social strata of Mexico’s population that has been historically neglected by the political system. Lourdes opens a reflective space to argue for cultural and social equality that eludes our present reality. 
Exhibitions