Gloria Steinem Foreward Introduction by Marcia G. Yerman Verónica Riedel

VERÓNICA RIEDEL

Marcia G. Yerman

Verónica Riedel utilizes her "Embroidered Monoprints" to shift perspectives and contradict the existing point of view about the Mestizas of Guatemala.  She tackles race, class, and identity and questions the effect that devastating one culture  has upon building another.  Before going into her studio, Riedel spent eighteen months researching the historical period of the Spanish arrival in the Americas.

She then undertook developing a pictorial narrative to redefine the women descended from the indigenous Mayans.  Born in Guatamala to parents of European origin, Riedel felt compelled to give a voice to the stories of refusal, despair, compliance, and love that were part of the struggle for survival. 

In Coli, Riedel places her subject in front of collaged archival material that includes the word missale, which references the text of the Roman Catholic Mass – the religion of the conquerors. Riedel presents the Mestizas, women of mixed white and Indian blood, in a costume with Elizabethan collar and handstiched linens and silks appliquéd with pearls, beads, and shells.  The language of the wardrobe speaks to two cultures.  Riedel has provided her subjects with a dignity and pride befitting the foremothers of what would become a new race.  By putting forth a new matriarchal archetype, Riedel has reinvented the legacy and future of the Latin American woman.

Coli, 2005
mixed media embroidered with silver, pearls, stones
beads and shells, 33 x 27 inches