Tonanlupanisma

This essay draws on Chicana/o cultural studies and art history to interpret the way three artworks by Chicana artists address the relationship between spirit and flesh through the indigenous inflected iconography of la Virgen de Guadalupe. Recognizing the significance of the transcultural link between Tonantzin (the Nahua mother “goddess”) and Guadalupe, I introduce the concept of Tonanlupanisma as a prism through which to understand cultural productions that engage the contested histories and iconographies of Tonantzin-Guadalupe from a decolonial feminist perspective. Countering the subjugation of Tonantzin in dominant Guadalupana visual culture and discourse in general, Tonanlupanisma critically privileges Mesoamerican indigenous worldviews that render a more complex and humanized image of the mother goddess and woman and thus challenge the spiritual/sexual dichotomies of Christian-influenced Western thought. Integrating scholarly research and personal narrative, the essay reinterprets two well-known artworks through a Tonanlupanista lens, Yolanda López’s Margaret F. Stewart: Our Lady of Guadalupe (1978) and Ester Hernández’s La Ofrenda II (1990), and offers the first published interpretation of Isis Rodriguez’s Virgen II (1990).