New World Consciousness

by Harmonia Rosales

This exhibition explores the duality between The Virgin Mary and Eve as a point of departure in the deconstruction of a dominant ideological narrative rooted in Eurocentric conceptions of beauty and superiority.
During the period of “Christian Colonization” women were put into two distinct categories; The Virgin Mary and Eve. The Virgin Mary is a woman who has been set on a pedestal so high that she is impossible to emulate. She is obedient. She is pure. She is long-suffering (and silent). In a patriarchy, she is in a word, ideal, the woman no modern woman in our society ever could become. And even should be made to want to become. And then there is Eve. Disobedient. Sexualized. The woman who dare to question, to challenge; the woman whom we are taught had Adam (and, thus, all of mankind), kicked out of the Garden of Eden as a result of her nonconformity. Both women have been judged by male standards of acceptability and respectability. Revered, or reviled. Commended, or condemned.