Guadalupana Pelágica 

Pedro Lavin 




As a boy in catholic school, the artist was encouraged by his teachers to draw “virgins instead of mermaids”: a catholic boy shouldn’t be concerning himself with fluid half creatures. They couldn’t quite reconcile what they saw: an unassuming, quiet, well behaved boy; with the wilder, feminine inner self betrayed by his drawings. A split occurred, between what he is, and what he appears to be.

With the Guadalupana Pelagica, Lavin attempts to unite these two warring halves. He further syncretizes the virgin on the hill, an already heavily syncretic symbol of contemporary Mexico, with the queer mermaid symbol; in the process creating his own personal deity. She is at once past, present and future, virgin and mermaid, madonna and whore, catholic schoolboy and homosexual.