Written by our talented friend Lupita Ruiz-Tolento.
Ecuadorian artist Lisa Torske puts a feminist spin on the country’s (and the region’s) most popular feminine icon: the Virgin Mary. Her feminist adaptations of this religious figure question the blatant machismo that continues to undermine the value of women and their place in society.
A primarily Catholic country, Ecuador venerates the Virgin Mary and many female saints as a celebration of both religiosity and motherhood. You’ll find vírgenes everywhere: shrined in corners of local shops, raised in altars at big markets, worn as gold necklaces, and hanging from taxi driver’s rear view mirrors. Aside from being the patron saints of villages and unofficial symbols of piety and protection, vírgenes are held up as the ideal of motherhood — and womanhood.
But Torske found glaring hypocrisy in that — how can a country that raises a female symbol to such importance, also be a place where the very existence of women is devalued on a daily basis? Violence, misogyny, institutional sexism, and objectivitation make up the reality of Ecuadorian women. While vírgenes are paraded down streets in shrines, followed by thousands of Ecuadorians who bow down to their power, every Ecuadorian woman is having quite the opposite experience.
Torske exposes this hypocrisy with her collection of vírgenes: artistic representations of the popular religious figure, fused with common insults and local expressions used to dehumanize women. It’s a brilliant, beautiful, revealing, and shocking exhibit all at once. And we have to applaud Torske on her genius critique of a society that struggles to embrace gender equality and protect women’s basic rights.
If you’re in Quito, and want to experience a raw artistic expression of Ecuador’s contemporary social tensions, this is it. Torske’s exhibit is open from February 6th to March 1st, 2019, at the following gallery:
Update This exhibition is closed. Luckily you can still check out the artist’s work here.
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