CSU Pueblo opens the Coatlaxupe: From Earth Mother to Chicana/o/x Icon exhibition today in the Fine Art Gallery at Hoag Hall. The launch coincides with the Feast Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The show invites visitors to explore how the image of La Virgen de Guadalupe evolved from precolonial beliefs to Catholic devotion to a powerful symbol of cultural identity and resistance.
Students in the CS/ART 415 Exhibiting Chicanx/Latinx Art course curated the exhibition, bringing together works from more than 15 Colorado artists alongside pieces created by CSU Pueblo students. Their collection traces how an image rooted in a 16th-century apparition story came to anchor Chicana/o/x expression, protest, and belonging across the U.S. Southwest.
Featured works include Vanessa Torrez Tonantzin’s “Virgen de Guadalupe” (2022), a gold-leaf and oil painting on canvas, and Carlos Fresquez’s “Liberty and Justice for All! NO EXCEPTIONS!” (2007), an acrylic piece that merges Statue of Liberty imagery with Guadalupe iconography. Additional contributing artists include Celeste Rodriguez, Clarissa Maki, Jim Sanchez Junior Robinson, Katrina Urenda Gomez, Lynn Fresquez, Matt Garcia, Rebecca Robles, Reddog Rudy, Sandra Ruiz, Tonio LeFebre, Tony Ortega, and Veronica Herrera.
“The significance of the Virgen de Guadalupe extends far beyond religious symbolism,” said April Bojorquez, DesertArtLAB co-director and interim director of the Aztlán Research Center. “For many in our communities, she represents unity in diversity, maternal care for humanity, and cultural resistance.”
Throughout the semester, student curators examined questions of representation, memory, and transformation. They studied how Guadalupe’s image has circulated through public spaces, art, and activism, and how she maintains sacred meaning while functioning as a cultural marker for identity, place, and community.
Some of the most striking pieces come from the wider Colorado community, particularly Pueblo, where several contributing artists are exhibiting their work publicly for the first time. The student curators intentionally sought out these voices, recognizing that Guadalupe’s image exists not just in gallery spaces but in home altars, murals, tattoos, and everyday acts of devotion.
Those conversations shape the exhibition. Some works honor traditional Catholic interpretations, while others reimagine Guadalupe as a political figure aligned with contemporary justice movements. Several pieces look further back, connecting her to Tonantzin, the Aztec earth mother associated with the Tepeyac site where the Guadalupe apparitions were later recorded.
The opening reception takes place Thursday Dec. 11, from 5 to 7 p.m. in the Fine Art Gallery, located off the lower lobby of Hoag Hall in the Capps Capozzolo Academic Center for the Arts at 2200 Bonforte Blvd. The event is free and open to the community.
The exhibition is presented by the Chicano/a Studies Program and the Department of Art & Creative Media. It also reflects months of intensive student work spent researching, designing, sequencing artworks, and writing accessible wall text that guides visitors through the show’s themes.
Coatlaxupe invites viewers to see Guadalupe as a living image, continually reinterpreted by new generations. On her feast day, the exhibition opens a conversation about identity, spirituality, and cultural memory that continues to evolve.
