Art Appreciation Project

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT BROWNSVILLE

ART APPRECIATION

ANALYSIS OF THE WORK OF ART:

Unfulfilled Vows

Lourdes G. Ibarra

The author of this work of art is a Mexican artist named Maria Fernanda Garcia Sada.

This work was created in 2007 in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico, and the birthplace of the artist.

The work is a collage. It shows a jacket made of different fabrics sewn together. Artist uses

various natural elements such as dried flowers, leaves, stems with thorns and a butterfly. She

also uses buttons, yarn, ribbon, a brown scapular, metal religious pendants, a metal hook for

hanging clothes and a picture of clouds in the background.

The title of this work “Unfulfilled Vows” express the artist’s emotional state: apparently she was

going through a divorce or heartbreak, but has faith that other companions will come, as she

expresses in the phrase embroidery with yellow yarn: “Las nubes dicen hay otros plantios que

me esperan” (“The clouds say there are other groves that await me”).

She shows her religious faith. A brown scapular with religious figures is on a heart sewn in the

left side (chest) of the jacket. From the heart come out branches with thorns and flowers; she

is sure that faith will help her to cope with her situation, and although it is hurting now, she

will succeed.

Below the waist (belly) of the jacket has a figure that appears to be a container for watering

plants, which seems to be a female reproductive system.

The left sleeve of the jacket has a brown ribbon with a bow and a metal pendant with a figure of

The Holy Family.

This piece of art has a lot of iconography:

Butterfly which means rebirth or the ephemeral nature of joy.

The meaning of flowers is the ephemeral nature of beauty.

The left sleeve of the jacket with a brown ribbon signifies mourning, something had died in her

heart; the illusion of having a family with the person who ended her relationship.

The tip of the left sleeve is different from the right tip, showing her “pain of heart”.

The female reproductive system means fertility.

The heart is yellow with a red and white flower. So her heart was weak but was pure and still

alive.

The flower means that love will return to bloom.

The jacket seems to be hung; perhaps her memories were hanging in her closet.

At the bottom right, hanging from the belly, there is a red paper heart that has in the back a

metal pendant with the image of St. Gerard, a saint of the Catholic Church, advocate for

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