Lilly Marie Rodriguez, known by her artist name Isis Rodríguez (born 1964 in Los Angeles, CA), is an American contemporary painter who uses the cartoon as a conceptual tool to discuss issues that focuses on the empowerment and liberation of women. Combining classical realism with contemporary influences including tattoo art, graffiti, and especially cartoons, her works bridge traditional distinctions between high and low art, creating a hybrid style that expresses new possibilities for female identity and spirituality. Judy Chicago and Edward Lucie Smith highlight Rodriguez as one of the few female artists to ever discuss the sex industry in her work, and Sherri Cullison includes Rodriguez among the most noteworthy American women artists of the 20th century.
Contents
She has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions in the United States, Mexico, and Argentina, including Bay Area Now in San Francisco and the Festival Internacional Cervantino in Guanajuato. Her art is featured in two documentaries: Blind Eye to Justice: HIV+ Women in California’s Prisons (Carol Leigh, 1998) and Live Nude Girls Unite! (Julia Query, 2000).
Genre
Rodriguez has been called both a feminist and a Chicana. In Women and Art: Contested Territory, Judy Chicago and Edward Lucie Smith emphasize Rodriguez’ feminist message, and MIX Magazine called her a “cultural sniper for the feminist movement.” Chican@ Art Magazine featured her art on the cover of its Fall 2006 edition, and Lowrider Arte called her “the closest thing to a Chicana cartoon goddess that you’ll find living in Alta California”.
On her website, however, Rodriguez identifies herself in depoliticized terms using Gloria Anzaldúa’s term mestiza: “a woman of mixed race who synthesizes multiple cultural and artistic influences.”
Style
Rodriguez’ art is sexual, sometimes graphically so. Sherri Cullison says of Rodriguez’ work: “Isis feels she is free to use her privilege to tease, and she does it with acrylic electroshock therapy conceived in true street-level, riot grrl style.” Judy Chicago says of Rodriguez’ 1996 painting “No More” (a nude woman with a snarling tiger emerging from her vagina): “[W]hile being able to celebrate the freedom of younger women artists like Isis Rodriguez, I have to… acknowledge the discomfort that this image causes me.”
Rodriguez’ art is highly symbolic. Often, her paintings redefine traditional symbols. When a male reporter from Despertar de Oaxaca criticized Rodriguez’ use of ski masks in her series “La Mujer Enmascarada,” assuming it was an anachronic reference to zapatismo, Rodriguez countered, “[T]he mask depends on your history and your personal experience. Maybe to you it represents zapatismo, but to an Esquimo it represents protection from the cold.” In 1999 Rodriguez told Artsy, “What interests me about my art is the creation of a female language made up of symbols and images in the hopes of establishing a woman’s voice without any apologies.”
Another hallmark of Rodriguez’ art is her frequent use of cartoons. In her early work, underground-style cartoons allow Rodriguez to make satirical commentaries about women’s issues. A good example is the painting “Freedom” from the series “My Life as a Comic Stripper” that pokes fun at the “Madonna/Whore complex”: a cartoon exotic dancer fantasizing about the Virgen de Guadalupe and a Harley Davidson, while male cartoon patrons such as Homer Simpson, Krusty the Clown, and Scooby Doo shower her with cash.
In her later paintings, Rodriguez uses cartoons conceptually, rather than satirically. The oil and pastel series “Enter With Discretion” (previously called “La Mujer Enmascarada”), features a realistically painted woman accompanied by a cartoon girl, challenging traditional distinctions between “high” and “low” art. In Rodriguez’ artist statement, she says: “The cartoon is an elegant, minimalistic drawing of the realistic figure, and the realistic figure is just an over-rendered cartoon.”
She also mentions that cartoons have a spiritual symbolism: “Cartoons can guide us toward our inner fantasies, where we often retreat to cope with our conflicts.”
Art and Activism
While living in San Francisco, Rodriguez worked as an exotic dancer with several strip clubs, including the Lusty Lady, Century Theatre, Mitchell Brothers, and the Crazy Horse. Many of her early paintings criticize the strip club industry for its materialism and exploitation. Rodriguez donated use of her painting "Be All You Can Be" (a satirical army ad spoofing women’s limited gender roles) to the stripper rights organization Live Nude Girls Unite, which fought to reduce club stage fees and mandate safe working conditions for dancers. She was one of more than 500 plaintiffs in the 1994 class action lawsuit against the Mitchell Brothers, which was settled in the dancers’ favor for $2.85 million in 1998.
Biography
Rodriguez was born in Los Angeles, California, and raised in Topeka, Kansas. She is the daughter of a Puerto Rican mother and a Mexican father.
Rodriguez earned a bachelor of fine arts in painting from the University of Kansas in 1989 and went on to study for a year at the San Francisco Art Institute.
Rodriguez lived in San Francisco until 2008, when she moved to Mexico. She currently lives in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico.
Works
Comics
Rodriguez is the co-author with Alfonso López de Anda of independent bilingual comic series Niñají. The comic was inspired by the Oaxacan legend of Donají, a princess who died in a war between the Mixtecs and the Zapotecs. Niñají tells the story of a pre-Hispanic princess who is assassinated in a conflict between rival shamans, then reborn 500 years later to share her indigenous values with modern Mexico. “What makes our comic very special is the fact that it is spiritually based, from an indigenous perspective,” Rodriguez told the San Miguel de Allende newspaper Atención.