expresión

juana alicia:
thinking big, painting larger

She walks up and down the riverbank, wailing, mourning the children who she murdered out of spite. You probably know the story: La Llorona, the weeping woman. There are many versions of the tale, but one of the oldest tells of a native Mexican woman (variously “la Malinche” or “Maria”) seduced by a Spanish conquistador who fathers her children and then leaves for other conquests. Crazed with anguish and jealousy, she drowns her children in the river, then, as a spirit haunting the riverbanks, weeps for eternity.

Now re-imagine the story. Turn this story of sorrow — and many say, female weakness — on its head. Imagine La Llorona not as a victim, but as a resilient heroine, a woman determined to rescue her children from conquest and victimization.

San Francisco artist Juana Alicia lives for this type of re-imagining. In her art, she revisits the stories, folklore, and the actors of our cultures, searching for threads of deeper truth. Her art never simply repeats these stories; it reinterprets, relives, and reconnects stories from the past to the struggles of the present.

In Alicia’s monumental mural, “La Llorona’s Sacred Waters” (2004), we see women from around the world — Bolivia, Mexico, India — struggling for control over their lives, and for the preservation of their native environments and lifestyles. In this re-imagining, water is the lifeblood that joins all women and their children. Each woman in the mural represents a different aspect of the struggle, with the Aztec goddess of water Chalchiuhtlicue presiding over it all. This new tale of La Llorona is a political statement, a feminist statement. And a very personal statement.