Transborder Imaginaries of La Virgen de las Panochas

“Transborder Imaginaries of La Virgen de las Panochas” examines queer Chicana artist Alma Lopez’s "Lupe and Sirena in Love" and the Mexican lesbian feminist collective Las Sucias’ "Virgen de las Panochas." The artworks... [ view full abstract ]

“Transborder Imaginaries of La Virgen de las Panochas” examines queer Chicana artist Alma Lopez’s "Lupe and Sirena in Love" and the Mexican lesbian feminist collective Las Sucias’ "Virgen de las Panochas." The artworks paired in this analysis register important cultural, ideological, and political border crossings that take place artistically and in the context of lesbian feminist transborder activism. In this paper I argue that politicized and sexualized Virgen de Guadalupe iconography generated across the Americas constitutes what I call an ephemeral “transborder archive” that links queer Chicana and Mexicana artists across linguistic, geopolitical, and cultural boundaries. Queer Chicana and Mexicana artists contest the disciplinary boundaries of heteropatriarchal nationalisms as they encounter and cross-pollinate each other, thus contributing to a transborder archive of queer and lesbian Chicana Mexicana desire.