Cristina Cárdenas

The ASU Hispanic Research Center Presents: Teaching & Visual Thinking Strategies with "La Niña de los Espejos" & "Yo Soy"

About: Cristina Cárdenas

Unlike many Mexican-born Chicana/o artists, Cristina Cárdenas did not relocate to the United States as a child but remained in Mexico into early adulthood. Her artistic education included studies in watercolor, drawing, and etching at the Instituto Allende and coursed in architecture at the Instituto Tecnologico de Estudios Superiores de Occidente. In 1980, she received her B.A. in painting from the Universidad de Guadalajara. After moving to the U.S. in the mid-1980s, she studied print-making at the University of Arizona in Tucson, earning her M.F.A. in 1990.

 In the 1990s and early 2000s, the HRC commissioned two lithographs by Cristina Cárdenas: "Yo Soy" (1999) and "La Niña de los Espejos" (2005). 

When Cárdenas relocated to Tucson in 1986, she did so to distance herself from what she considers the patriarchal society of her homeland. Her work is in large part autobiographical and introspective, an appraisal of personal identity and self-image. Cárdenas gives women, who are frequently the protagonists of her work, a permanent and positive voice. Often, these women protagonists in her work serve as embodiments of strength, innocence, subjugation, and courage. Cárdenas acknowledged the Mexican artist José Clemente Orozco as a major influence in her work; this is evident in her neofigurative, exuberantly expressionist painting style, as well as her bold brushwork and palette. And, like the Mexican muralists, as well as U.S. artists such as Luis Jiménez, her paintings embrace her ethnic background and cultural heritage.

In an effort to promote and celebrate the fine art of Mexican American artists in Arizona and around the country, the Hispanic Research Center commissioned several Mexican American artists, including Cárdenas, to create a set of lithographs. From those commissions, Cárdenas created "Yo Soy" in 1999 and "La Niña de los Espejos" in 2005. These two lithographs remain a vital part of the HRC collection of Mexican American and Chicana/o art.


Lesson Plan: Visual Thinking Strategies

Here at the Hispanic Research Center, we are inspired by  Visual Thinking Strategies  (VTS), a visual and discussion-based facilitation method that seeks to foster collaborative, inclusive, community-building dialogue grounded in the visual arts.

Below, we draw on VTS and the pedagogical method known as "What's going on in this picture?" to explore two lithographs by Cristina Cárdenas: "La Niña de los Espejos/The Girl of the Mirrors" (2005) and "Yo Soy/Myself" (1999).

To begin, watch  this video introduction  to "What's going on this picture?"

Then, encourage students to look closely at these two lithographs by Cárdenas and together answer the following three questions:

  1. What's going on this picture?
  2. What do you see that makes you say that?
  3. What more can you find?

Respond to student comments with paraphrasing and affirmation of their observations. To extend the discussion, students can individually write a "blog post" that summarizes their responses. Students can then read each others' posts and reply to their peer's observations.

Following the group discussion, share information about  Cristina Cárdenas , including her life story and the  additional resources  available to supplement this lesson . Students are encouraged to consider how learning her backstory might influence the ways in which they see "La Niña de los Espejos" and "Yo Soy." Next, share the image analysis of ASU art historian ,  Dr. JoAnna Reyes , shown in the following section.


La Niña de los Espejos (2005)

Instructions: Navigate through Dr. JoAnna Reyes' answers to "What's going on in this picture?" by scrolling through the lithograph below.

Be sure to click "unmute background audio" so you can hear Dr. Reyes' voice. As you zoom in and out of the image, you can always click on the image itself to see it in its entirety.

"So, the first thing that stands out to me about this print is that we are not actually looking at a depiction of a girl standing on a stool, we're looking at a depiction of a picture of a girl standing on a stool."

"So, if you examine the top of [this image] you can see that there is a curved frame..."

"...and then, these two sorts of insets [left and right of girl] that suggest almost like a paper would be holding it down."

"And then, in the lower corner, we see these two squares; so often we see those in a photo album. So, this might be a printed picture that's being contained within a frame of some sort. So, that's the first thing that stands out to me."

"Looking at the young girl that is depicted though, her proportions, we can see that she has sort of these stocky short limbs. And those immediately make a visual reference to maybe Diego Rivera's work. We often see his depictions of Indigenous people in particular with the same sort of physical body proportions. So, [Cárdenas] may be making a nod to that moment in the early twentieth-century of portraiture."

"The little girl is really interesting. She is wearing this really pretty white dress or light pastel dress that has these bands of white at the bottom and some flowers across the bust."

"And her dress is laying flat with some pleats, and you can imagine the sort of, you know, the kind of thick fabric that it would be made out of."

"But her hair is, interestingly, kind of flying around her in a wild way. This suggests, because the dress is lying flat, that she is possessed by some sort of internal animism, right? That she has some sort of power that is making her hair stand up in sort of illogical way considering her dress is lying flat. There is a sense of power that is contained within her figure."

"And she is looking out calmly at us, the viewer, which looks rather peaceful to me, even though she has this sort of overflowing of power."

"You can also see that she has also a nice blue or purple ribbon in her hair. So, she is presented in a way where she is very neat. She's clearly posed for this picture that is being taken of her."

"So, she's standing on a little, rough stool. And I really like the stool, too. This is something that caught my eye as well. I think it is something that is familiar to people with Mexican American heritage."

"You can see that [the stool legs] have this rough, wooden dowels that make up the legs. You can see that there is some sort of swirl where the wood has been cut. And then I can image the surface of that being a sort of woven rattan. I grew up seeing these at my grandparents' house, and for me there's an immediate sort of sense-memory of this little stool. So I can imagine that."

"You can also see that she is standing in a shallow interior space. There's some orange tiles that the stool is placed upon. You can imagine these being Saltillo tiles and they are receded backwards into this shallow plane."

"And then behind her figure, there is some sort of swirling, back background that gives you a sense that there is some sort of depth behind her, there's clearly a wall, she's not standing within a vacant space. And the texture that Cardenas adds to the image through the use of these layers of ochre and a light teracotta color gives a sense of depth even though the space is sort of incomprehensible. We are not sure what is going on behind her, but there's clearly some sort of interesting, metaphysical thing happening with her hair flying around and the sort of darkness behind her. But she remains calm and placid just looking out at us as the viewers."

"In her right hand, which she is holding close to her body, she appears to be holding a compact mirror..."

"...and then in her left hand, to me, it looks like she is holding a sort of glass potion bottle or something that has a leather strap that is wrapped around the neck and between her pointer figure and her thumb. Something about this reminds me of Remedios Varo, who is a famous Mexico-based artist who worked with surrealist paintings. There's something about the sort of mystical in this image, I would suggest, and also her color palette is reminding me of this as well."

"I like the sort of suggestion of some texture being laid down on top of the image [see paint strokes to left]. So, sort of extending beyond the bottom of the picture of the girl..and crossing over into the left border, extending beyond the frame. You can see some kind of black and some terracotta. So this, to me, suggests that we are looking at a picture that has been maybe worn over time."

"So, this is probably a picture that was beloved and taken care of, and the artist is depicting it now as a lithograph, as maybe a way to capture a memory."


Yo Soy (1999)

Instructions: As you did with the lithography above, navigate through Dr. Reyes' analysis of Cristina Cardenas' "Yo Soy" by scrolling through the lithograph below. Be sure to click "unmute background audio" so you can hear Dr. Reyes' voice.

"This is another lovely image. Again, this one centers on a young girl who's depicted sitting on a chair..."

"The style of chair, I think, is really interesting. So, it's just a kind of simple wooden chair that's been painted over, kind of white-washed...and then it has green and red accents."

"And then you can see on the headrest behind her back, you can see some simple flowers that are painted. So, this is a familiar, sort of folk, folk-art, or vernacular furniture object that I think a lot of people might have in their homes."

"But if you look down at the feet of the young girl where they rest on the little footrest on the chair, you can see that the paint has been sort of worn away. So, you can imagine that this was sort of originally a really nice, painted object; but that, with time, it has been sort of been worn down a little bit."

"So, you can see that some black wash has been applied to at the bottom parts of this [chair]. So, you can imagine how many children's feet have been rubbing against the legs of this chair."

"Similarly, on the post near her face, you can see that it has also been sort of worn away. So, I am imagining this [chair] is a well loved object that has maybe moved through generations of this family...that has been sort of moved around and used a lot."

"The little girl is looking over her right shoulder—and we are not really sure at what.... But there is a sense of movement and dynamism in this print that I find really interesting."

"We can see that she is wearing a long, white dress that covers from her neck down to almost the ends of her wrist. And only her feet are sticking out."

"But the fabric, I think, is really interesting. So, there are some patches of yellow and blue and even a kind of a coral color...suggesting that there is some sort of luminescence or a reflective quality about this and its catching the light in a certain way and making some interesting shadows and picking up color."

"There is also a petticoat if you look at the bottom—especially on the right hand side you can see kind of a lace or something. So, even though there is not a lot of detail about the dress itself, there are enough clues given to us that we can understand that this is probably a nice dress that she's wearing."

"And then another interesting thing about this [image] is that the chair seems to be sitting in water. So...it wouldn't make sense if this were a rug. So, this is a kind of blue surface on top of yellow ground. There are some shadows, some sort of swirling...giving us a sense that this is a kind of unstable surface. So, it's either water or some other material that's kind of neither here nor there."

"Above her head there is some text that relates to a Spanish novel [by Camilo Jose Cela]. And the text takes the shape of half of a heart. So, if you were to turn it sideways, it would be like the right half of a heart..."

"...and it's mirrored across. It's kind of bisected horizontally; the volume of it goes up and the bottom of it makes up the lower half. So, there is an interesting connection with the depiction of a heart in this picture."

"As in the other lithograph by Cárdenas, the young woman depicted here also has this sort of wild hair that's flowing out from under her body. She also has these beautiful colors that are incorporated into it as well. We have this sort of teal along with the black and some kind of greenish colors that are coming through as well. So, it gives you a sense of something a little bit otherwordly about her. Again, she is sort of withstanding either some sort of gale or she's, again, possessing some kind of power that is making her hair stand out—overflowing with this energy."

"And she's sitting in this incomprehensible space. We can't really tell if there is wall directly behind her or if this is some kind of liminal no-space."

"All we know about her is that we have a young woman sitting in a little chair and she is holding a paintbrush—so, she's clearly some kind of artist or maker. And I guess it's up to us to imagine what she's capable of doing."

Additional Resources

Primary sources related to Cristina Cárdenas' artist practice and relationship with the HRC from the HRC archive. Scroll through the resources below or  click here  to view and download these resources.

Notes

This project was built using using ArcGIS StoryMaps and with support from the  ASU Humanities Institute. 

The opening text under "About: Cristina Cárdenas" is borrowed from volume one of the art book  Contemporary Chicana and Chicano Art: Artists, Works, Culture, and Education , which was published in 2002 by Bilingual Review Press of the ASU Hispanic Research Center.

Thank you to the HRC team, particularly Anita Huízar-Hernández and Santiago Morrato, for their insights and collaboration.

Credits

 Dr. Alana de Hinojosa  is a Digital Public Humanities Fellow at the ASU Hispanic Research Center and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Transborder Studies at ASU. In 2024, she will join Texas State University as an Assistant Professor of History. Alana holds a PhD in Chicana/o Studies from UCLA and a certificate in the Digital Public Humanities from George Mason University. Her scholarship is concerned with histories of displacement, diaspora, and refusal, and what these have to do with the Río Grande and the Chamizal Land Dispute.

 Dr. JoAnna Reyes  is a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow and incoming Assistant Professor in the School of Art at ASU. JoAnna holds a PhD in Art History from UCLA and has held previous positions at the Getty Research Institute, LACMA, and the Hispanic Society Museum and Library. Her scholarship centers on the visual and material culture of colonial Mexico and contemporary Chicana/o America.

Suggested Citation: de Hinojosa, A. 2024. "The ASU Hispanic Research Center Presents: Teaching & Visual Thinking Strategies with Cristina Cárdenas' 'La Niña de los Espejos' & 'Yo Soy.'" Research Gate, DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.10207.27043

 In the 1990s and early 2000s, the HRC commissioned two lithographs by Cristina Cárdenas: "Yo Soy" (1999) and "La Niña de los Espejos" (2005).