A Rose of Love in Midwinter

In Ester Hernandez’s La Ofrenda (The Offering, silkscreen, 1988), the flat, crisp Pop Art style and bright colors clearly signal the joy of the relationship between the woman offering the symbolic rose of love and her partner. However, the fact that she is also offering it to a tattoo of the Virgin de Guadalupe dramatizes what Hernandez sees as the special challenge for Chicana women within lesbian culture who do not wish to relinquish their Catholic faith. As one observer has written, for Hernandez, “the simple act of a rose extended as an offering of love [is to] humanize the sometimes polarizing cultural divide.”