women also deserve the respect and love lavished on Guadalupe... It is a call to look at women, hardworking, enduring and mundane, as the heroines of our daily routine... We privately agonize and sometimes publicly speak out on the representation of us in the majority culture. But what about the portrayal of ourselves in our own culture? Who are our heroes, our role models?... It is dangerous for us to wait around for the dominant culture to define and validate what role models we should have." Traditional images of the Virgen de Guadalupe stress religious symbolic meaning primarily maternity, reinforcing gender roles. López redesigned a powerful cultural icon in order to shift the observer's point of view by providing an alternative interpretation. López expressed that in images of the original Virgin, she is "bound by the excess cloth around her legs that makes her immobile". The Artist as the Virgen of Guadalupe painting shows López herself running out of the picture frame, smiling with her running shoes as if competing in a race, wearing Mary's shawl as a cape, and jumping over the red, white, and blue angel, showing pride in her culture, and finally holding a snake to demonstrate the strength she holds. López explained this imagery, saying "[s]he holds the Guadalupe cloak like a cape at the end of a race and jumps over the angel with red, white, and blue wings a symbol of the United States capitalism". In "Yolanda López: Breaking Chicana Stereotypes" Laduke explains, "López not only commands her body but seems to predict her role as an artist who is not afraid of encountering social and political issues or using her skills to promote social change". López is not afraid to challenge society or to change what has been falsely represented in Mexican culture, through images of the Virgin Mary, and through images projecting how young women and mothers should look or behave a certain way. Through her art, López challenged her culture. As Karen Mary Davalos, a scholar of Chicano studies, asserts, "López consistently confronts predominant modes of Latino and Latina representations, proposing new models of gender, racial, and cultural identity". Regarding her intended viewer, López stated "Over the years as I have created my art, I have tried to address an audience, a Chicano audience, specifically a California Chicano audience". López's Nuestra Madre (1981–88, acrylic and oil paint on masonite), a portrait