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

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