“They work to subvert the stereotypical images that have regulated the formulation of gender

identity for Mexican women, from sainted mother (the Virgin of Guadalupe or Coatilcue, the
Mexica “mother” of all Mexicans) to the macho woman with high heels and spurs. Hadad’s
recent piece Heavy Nopal suggests that the narrow grid provided by the stereotype that reduces and fixes a one-
dimensional image serves only as a critique for those who are able to see the violence of the framing. In a tableau vivant of a
Diego Rivera painting, she humorously bears the weight of stereotypical accumulation and "anxious" repetition. She is all in
one: the Diego Rivera girl holding calla lilies; the soldadera (revolutionary fighter); the bejeweled Latina, loaded down with
rings, bracelets, and dangling earrings; the India with the hand-embroidered shirt, long black braids, and a bewildered look
about her (Figure 73). The overmarked image of telegenic ethnicity signals the rigid structuring of cultural visibility. The
parodic self-marking reads as one more repetition of the fact, one more proof of its fixity. Latin America is visible only
through cliche, known solely "in translation." Hadad plays with the anxiety behind these images of excess, pushing the most
hegemonic of spectators to reconsider how these stereotypes of cultural/racial/ethnic dif ference are produced, reiterated, and
consumed. “ Diana Taylor, The Archive, p. 220-221