Ester Hernandez

Ester Hernández (born 1944) is a California Bay Area Chicana visual artist recognized for her prints and pastels focusing on farm worker rights, cultural, political, and Chicana feminist issues.

Hernández' was an activist in the Chicano Arts Movement in the 1960's and also made art pieces that focus on issues of social justice, civil rights, women's rights, and the Farm Worker Movement.

Hernández is a Chicana of Yaqui and Mexican heritage.

She was born in Dinuba, a small town in the central San Joaquin Valley of California.

Her parents and family were farmworkers.

Hernández's work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally since 1973.

She has received awards and commissions from organizations ranging from the California Arts Council to the National Endowment for the Arts.

Hernandez's work is in the permanent collections of nearly twenty national and international museums including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in California, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC and the National Museum of Mexican Art.

Hernández's archives are housed at the Stanford University Library's Department of Special Collections in Palo Alto, California.

Hernández often draws inspiration from her personal heroines, who include Frida Kahlo, Dolores Huerta, and Lydia Mendoza.

She is currently based in San Francisco, California.

In 1976, Hernández earned a Bachelor of Art degree at the University of California, Berkeley.

La Virgen de Guadalupe Defendiendo los Derechos de Los Xicanos is an etching and aquatint created by Hernandez in 1976 while she was a student at UC Berkeley.

This print is in the permanent collection at the Smithsonian Museum of Art.

It is considered to be the first art to reimagine Our Lady of Guadalupe in a Chicana feminist context.

In the etching, Our Lady of Guadalupe is pictured with the iconic halo, Cerulean mantel, and the angel carrying a moon.

However, in Hernandez's etching, Our Lady of Guadalupe is visually reimagined by sporting a karate uniform and delivering a powerful kick.

In addition to this, the angel's facial expression is changed.

While enrolled in an etching class at UC Berkeley, Ester Hernandez was inspired by personal experiences that ultimately led her to create La Virgen de Guadalupe Defendiendo los Derechos de los Xicanos. In an interview with scholar Roman-Odio, who has written extensively on Chicana feminist art, Ester Hernandez shared she received a card with the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe at her grandmother's funeral but immediately thought that it did not truly represent her grandmother: “My grandmother had sixteen kids, worked years in the fields and had a hard, but beautiful life.

She was a strong and powerful woman, so I decided to change the image.” Additionally, at the same time she was enrolled in the etching class, she was also taking a women's self-defense class with other Chicana women.

The etching transforms the passive stance of our Lady of Guadalupe into an energetic kick.

The re-imagination of Our Lady of Guadalupe represents the hard work she performs in social justice issues and Chicano social issues.

At the same time, this reimagination is a tribute to the strength, spirit and fierceness of Chicana women.

Libertad is a 1976 etching that Hernandez created in response to the American Bicentennial celebration while she was a student at UC Berkeley.

The piece depicts a female artist, identified by many as a Chicana artist, chipping away at the Statue of Liberty and revealing a Mayan Sculpture.

In Libertad, Hernandez reimagines the Statue of Liberty, an iconic American symbol, to reclaim the history of the Americas and uplift the presence of natives peoples.

Sun Mad is a 1982 serigraph.

In this serigraph, the artist turns the widely recognized red-bonneted female figure carrying a basket of grapes on the Sun-Maid raisin box into a skeleton to visually protest insecticides.

This screen print is in the permanent collection of the Los Angeles Museum of Art in California, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC and the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago.

Describing this image, Hernandez states, "Slowly I began to realize how to transform the Sun Maid and unmask the truth behind the wholesome figures of agribusiness. Sun Mad evolved out of my anger and my fear of what would happen to my family, my community, and to myself."

Tejido de los Desaparecidos is a silkscreen print created by Hernandez in 1984.

This piece is a commentary on the Guatemalan civil war that led to the genocide of Maya people.

The slikscreen print replicates the pattern and textures of a traditional Guatemalan rebozo (shawl) but also includes small white images of helicopters, skeletons, and red blood splatters.

This image is featured in a 1989 installation titled Sun Mad that is dedicated to the artist's father who was a farm worker from the San Joaquin Valley, California.

This installation is in the permanent collection of the National Mexican Museum of Art in Chicago.

La Ofrenda is a 1990 serigraph.

This print is in the permanent collection at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC and the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago.

This print portrays a woman with a short punk-style haircut facing away from spectators while showcasing La Virgen de Guadalupe tattooed on her back.

La Virgen de Guadalupe is a symbol representing womanhood and femininity throughout Chicanx history.

By depicting this tattoo on a woman, Vincent Carillo argues that Hernández "questions the gendered power dynamics" that restrict women to the domestic sphere.