Maddu Haucuja's empowering portraits on view throughout June

With her magnetizing paintings of fabulous Mexican women Maddu Huacuja lets the viewer know that she is the aesthetic daughter of Nueva Prescencia. Her larger than life portraits of women who are famously associated with social activism fall well within the movement of artists who believe that connecting with the human image in art can better your life.

"These are portraits of women I knew about but did not learn about in school," says the Mexican born Huacuja.

On view in the circular entrance lobby of Bunker Hill Community College's new Chelsea campus, Mexican Female Archetypes Huacuja's series of large scale oil paintings greet the constant flow of students coming and going.

Some of the women's names may ring a bell even for those viewers not of Mexican descent - all of the women have personal and stirring stories that you can easily connect with.

First feminist advocate

The poet Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, for one, wrote in the 1600s but her verse and essays are enthusiastically read today. For Huacuja, the work that most exemplifies the writer's significance to women is "Respuesta a Sor Filotea," an impassioned essay defending the author's right and every woman's right to think and be educated, to have a voice in public and theological debate. She is regarded as the first advocate for women's rights in the Americas.

Other portraits in this empowering exhibit include the Virgin of Guadalupe, the dark skinned patron saint of Mexico whose banner the Mexican people carried when they fought for the independence of Mexico and to whom people set up shrines to this day. There are also a number of warrior women who fought side by side with men or had their own regiments in the War for Independence.

Visitors to the exhibit are aided in understanding the import of each of the women through an attractively designed, free guide book.

The exhibit was created by Laura Montgomery who runs the gallery at the main campus in Charlestown. She invited Hucuja to bring the paintings to Chelsea to inaugurate the new gallery space. Also on view in a second floor gallery are works by well known Boston African American Artists Paul Goodnight, Jennifer Hughes, Lou Jones, Lolita Parker, Jr., L'Merchie Frazier, Hakim Raquib, Peg Tuitt, Dana Chandler, Kayiga, and Alex Rivest. There is also some student art.

The shows run through June. You can travel there directly from the Bunker Hill campus on the free regularly scheduled shuttle or go directly to 175 Hawthorne St. in Bellingham Square which is in the center of Chelsea.