I am a Mexican-born Chicana artist, activist and visual storyteller.  I took my BA from the UC Santa Barbara (1988) and my MFA from the UC Irvine (1996). My work ranges from serigraphs, paintings, and photo-based digital prints, to public murals and video.  I am dedicated to issues of representation and social justice, taking as my subject the daily lives, mythologies and dreams of people of color.  Through my visual scholarship, I deconstruct and re-figure cultural icons, including La Virgen de Guadalupe, allowing them to exist in radically new ways. 

My “claim to fame” is a controversy in New Mexico over my interpretation of “Our Lady,” which caused a stir in the patriarchal Catholic community that wanted my piece censored from an exhibition of cyber art at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe. My arts activism lives at the critical intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, love (as an oppositional methodology) and resistance. 

Since the 1992 Los Angeles uprisings, I have been engaged in collaborative public art-making that helps to bridge black and brown communities. Collaboration is one of my favorite methodologies, and together with other artists, writers, performers, academics, queer activists, and community members, I helped co-found three organizations in Los Angeles: L.A. Coyotas, Tongues, and Homegirl Productions. I have designed posters for national and international events, and my artwork has appeared on the covers of more than twenty publications. My most recent video documentary is a 20-minute short entitled “Boi Hair.”

Today, I am working with Dr. Alicia Gaspar de Alba on editing a publication of essays entitled Our Lady of Controversy: Alma Lopez's Irreverent Apparition. Read more about this project below.