"Santa Vida"

With her works steeped in nuevo-Aztlán cultural symbolism that incorporates the traditional Catholic religious imagery and themes of her childhood in South Texas, Regina Roman expertly melds the sacred and the profane, the local and the universal. The results are humorous, endearing, challenging and nothing short of brilliant. Her unique artistic vision, which becomes a kind of personal spirituality through ritual and symbolism, is Chicana-centric and decidedly melodramatic in the most rewarding of ways. Her work aims, at least in part, for the decolonization of the iconography she reveres.