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ERIC Number: EJ787949
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2008
Pages: 29
Abstractor: Author
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0005-2604
EISSN: N/A
"Ojo de la Diosa": Becoming Divine in Delilah Montoya's Art Photography
Kuusinen, Asta
Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies, v33 n1 p33-61 Spr 2008
The essay interprets Delilah Montoya's artworks in the context of so-called feminist theology, drawing from its ideas about desire, natality, and self-divination. After discussing the theme of desire and the quest for women's religious agency in some of Montoya's earlier works, the essay focuses on the photo-installation "La Guadalupana", elucidating the artist's technique in reorganizing the parameters of the "proto-subject" of Chicano cultural nationalism. One of the reified embodiments of this subject allegedly is "el pinto", the Mexican American male convict or ex-convict. Elaborating upon Montoya's working methods and her motivation to extract the pinto image from the prison confines and spirit his body into the museum, the essay finally argues that the installation engages in a bi-gendering performance that ritualizes the male body as the site of suffering. At the same time, the vernacular religious aesthetics of the work situate the artist herself as the "Eye" of a Mexican American community--that is, as an embodied subject whose religious authority dismantles the myth that only the male body can act as the writer and reader of culture. (Contains 5 figures and 15 notes.)
UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. 193 Haines Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1544. Tel: 310-794-9380; Tel: 310-825-2642; Fax: 310-206-1784; e-mail: press@chicano.ucla.edu; Web site: http://www.chicano.ucla.edu/press
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A