The Museum of Guadalajara, under the Junta of Castilla-La Mancha, has hosted since May 7 the exhibition Alonso Cano. Like a Virgin, a show that uses the image of the Virgin Mary and the iconography of the Virgin of the Milk to develop a contemporary ideological discourse on sexuality, gender, and the “reappropriation” of the female body.
The exhibition, organized together with the Elena de la Cruz School of Art, will remain open until June 21. The «artistic» affront makes use of visual elements associated with cross-dressing, queer aesthetics, lingerie, and cultural provocation around one of the most sacred and venerated representations of Christianity.
Under the title Like a Virgin —an explicit reference to the song popularized by Madonna— the show presents reinterpretations of Alonso Cano’s Virgo Lactans through corsets, leather, contemporary styling, and photographic compositions created by students of photography, fashion, and design.
From Cultura Castilla-La Mancha, the initiative is presented as an «exercise of pedagogical innovation and cultural mediation» aimed at connecting historical heritage with the new generations of artists.
The Virgin Reinterpreted from Contemporary Ideology
According to the official description issued by Cultura Castilla-La Mancha, the project starts from the idea that the iconography of the Virgin breastfeeding the Child Jesus was the subject of “censorship and sexualization” during the Counter-Reformation.
The exhibition intends to explore “the historical tension between the sanctity of the female body and the patriarchal gaze”, reinterpreting a deeply theological image of divine motherhood from contemporary ideological categories linked to feminism, sexual identity, and gender theory.
Among the cultural references used are figures like Madonna, Alexander McQueen, or Jean Paul Gaultier, in an approach that mixes Baroque sacred art with visual codes typical of contemporary aesthetic provocation.
A Provocation That Would Hardly Be Made with Other Religions
The representation shows the treatment that certain cultural institutions give to Catholic religious heritage, frequently turned into an object of artistic provocation and ideological reinterpretation.
The divine motherhood of Mary is reduced in this exhibition to a mere pretext to introduce contemporary political and cultural discourses, deliberately emptying Alonso Cano’s work of its spiritual and devotional dimension.
It should be noted that this type of provocations is rarely carried out using sacred symbols of other religions, while Christianity continues to be a frequent target of cultural transgression subsidized with public funds.
