The road to Tepeyac

Alinka Echeverría

Every year, six million Mexican Catholics make the pilgrimage to the Basilica in Mexico City to worship the Virgin of Guadalupe. With “El camino al Tepeyac”, Alinka Echeverría created an immersive photographic installation consisting of images of the pilgrims with their depictions of the Virgin, who appeared in 1531.Echeverría’s fascination for faith and rituals led her to develop her own perspective: she portrays the pilgrims with their religious and devotional objects from behind and from afar. She takes the pictures out of context and sets them against a white background. This allows the viewer to focus on the individual and establish a relationship between subject and symbol.
For the individual, pilgrimage is a combination of punishment and reward, gratitude and forgiveness, promise and hope. For the community, it is about returning to the origin, renewal, and rebirth: the virgin is the highest symbol of the mother. The artist shows how much the figure of the Virgin of Guadalupe is still rooted in contemporary Mexico’s visual culture.