Isis Rodriguez

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.

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).

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.”

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.”

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Wikipedia