Twelfth International Conference on The Image

Abstract

This paper argues that the visual discourse in the South Texas Latinx zine St. Sucia embodies a Chicana Camp sensibility to build new spaces in which queer feminist Latina/os can configure new, transitional, indeterminate, and multiple identities. While many art historians and Chicano Studies scholars have studied the role of queer Chicana/o artists in Northern and Southern California, scholars have dedicated less time to their roles and impact in South Texas. By creating a dialectical space with these signs and self-representations, the founders of St. Sucia used Chicana/o Camp to create a radically democratic space that offers fresh interpretations (and often criticisms) of Chicanidad and Latinidad.I begin with an iconographic study of La Virgen de Guadalupe from Chicana and Mexican artists in the 1970s through the 2000s. Chicana lesbian feminist pushed these representations even further. With these theoretical frameworks and visual traditions at hand, Chicanas and Latinas of the twenty-first century produce artwork that acts as a terminal in a network of interconnected cultural elements, instigating a culture of activity that reinterprets preceding narratives. These artists’ performances of the religious figure influence and differ from the performances of female religious figures in the zine St. Sucia. St. Sucia as an icon and St. Sucia as a space do not exist without La Virgen or the different ways Chicana artists have personified the cultural icon.