Long Bio: Alma López is known as the Digital Diva. Fourteen years ago, after receiving two prestigious Los Angeles based visual art awards, she invested in digital equipment (computer, software, printer, and a camera) with which she produced a series of giclee prints on canvas titled Lupe and Sirena. That series of work raises questions about popular colonial Mexican icons while bringing radical feminist Chicana lesbian issues to the fore as it manipulates canonical colonial imagery. One of those prints, titled Our Lady is the subject of the book Our Lady of Controversy: Alma López’s “Irreverent Apparition,” which López co-edited with Dr. Alicia Gaspar de Alba, and was published by the University of Texas Press in 2011.

Born in Mexico and raised in Los Angeles, López received her MFA from the University of California, Irvine. She is a visual and public artist who has several art projects commissioned by the City of Los Angeles. Currently, she is a visiting lecturer teaching courses on Chicana/Latina art and artists, Arts Censorship, and Los Angeles Queer Art and Artists for the Cesar Chavez Department of Chicana/o Studies and the LGBT Studies Program at UCLA. Through her work, her activism, and her popular website (www.almalopez.com), López upholds her position as one of the most visible and cutting-edge queer Chicana feminist activist artists.

In the last two decades, her work has been exhibited in over one hundred solo and group exhibitions in Mexico City; Naples, Italy; Cork, Ireland; and throughout the United States, including UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, Los Angeles, California; Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska, Lincoln; Richman Gallery, The Park School, Baltimore, Maryland; MexiArte Museum, Austin, Texas; and International Print Center, New York. Collections include Museum of International Folk Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico; Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, California; and McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas.

López is a recipient of Denver’s Metropolitan State University’s Richard T. Castro Distinguished Visiting Professorship (2013), and the UCLA LGBTQ Lavender Graduation Students’ Choice Faculty Award (2013); two UCLA Diversity Program Awards for Innovative Courses in the Departments of Chicana/o and LGBT Studies (2011-2012); University of California Regent’s Lecturer in the Departments of Art History and Chicana/o Studies at UCLA (2009); Durfee Foundation’s Artist Resource Completion Grant (2005); Astraea Foundation for Justice Visual Artist Grant (2005); California Community Foundation’s Arts Funding Initiative Visual Arts Mid Career Grant (2002); Pollock-Siqueiros Binational Visual Arts Prize (1999); California Community Foundation’s Brody Emerging Visual Artist Grant (1998); and the City of Los Angeles’ Individual Artist Grant (1998).

Short Bio: Alma Lopez is a visual artist and currently, a visiting lecturer at UCLA. Over the last two decades, Lopez’s work has been exhibited in over one hundred national and international solo and group exhibitions. In 1999, UCLA’s La Gente Newsmagazine dubbed Alma Lopez the Digital Diva for her groundbreaking photo-based digital series Lupe and Sirena. That series, and most of Lopez’s visual work, raises questions about popular Mexican icons filtered through a radical Chicana feminist lesbian lens.  One of those images, titled Our Lady is the subject of the book Our Lady of Controversy: Alma López’s “Irreverent Apparition,” which López co-edited with her spouse, Professor Alicia Gaspar de Alba, and published by the University of Texas Press in 2011.

50 word bio: Alma López is a controversial artist. Her work has been exhibited in over one hundred solo and group exhibitions internationally. In 2011, the University of Texas Press published her book Our Lady of Controversy: Alma López’s “Irreverent Apparition,” co-edited with Alicia Gaspar de Alba. Her website is www.almalopez.com.

Nacida en Los Mochis, Sinaloa y criada en el Este de Los Angeles, Alma López obtuvo su maestria de artes de la Universidad de California, Irvine en 1995. Ella ha enseñado como artista invitada en los departamentos de Estudios Chicanas/os y Estudios LGBT en la Universidad de California Riverside, UC Irvine, UC Santa Barbara, UCLA y la Universidad Loyola Marymount. Su trabajo ha sido exhibido en museos y organizaciones comunitarias a nivel nacional, así como en la ciudad de México, Ciudad Juárez, Nápoles, Italia y el condado de Cork, Irlanda. En abril de 2011, el libro de Nuestra Señora de la controversia: "Aparición irreverente" de Alma López, co-editado con la Dra. Alicia Gaspar de Alba, fue publicado por University of Texas Press. A través de su trabajo, su activismo y su sitio web popular, López defiende su posición como una de las más visibles y vanguardistas artistas Chicanas feministas.

Born in Los Mochis, Sinaloa and raised in East Los Angeles, Alma López got her MFA from the University of California, Irvine in 1995. She has taught as a Visiting Artist in departments of Chicana/o Studies and LGBTQ Studies at UC Riverside, UC Irvine, UC Santa Barbara, UCLA, and Loyola Marymount University. Her work has been exhibited in museums and community organizations nationally, as well as in Mexico City; Ciudad Juárez; Naples, Italy and Cork County, Ireland. In April 2011, the book Our Lady of Controversy: Alma López’s “Irreverent Apparition,” which López co-edited with Dr. Alicia Gaspar de Alba, was published by University of Texas Press. Through her work, her activism, and her popular website, López upholds her position as one of the most visible and cutting-edge Chicana feminist activist artists.

 

To contact artist, please send email it to almaloveslupe@gmail.com