With this image I created in August of 2019, right before my week-long homelessness social experiment, I intended to portray America as the Winged Angel breastfeeding the homeless with the virginal, pure and nurturing milk of Mother America. I hired a homeless couple,  and I invited them to stay a couple of nights in my Airbnb as special guests after finding out they slept in their car for over 10 years. I got to cook for them some of my Spanish cuisine favorites. I wanted to hear all about their story. By hiring them I wanted to bring Dignity to them, instead of Charity. We became good friends up to this day.

Based on Roman Charity, the exemplary story of a woman, Pero, who secretly breastfeeds her father, Cimon, after he is incarcerated and sentenced to death by starvation. Pero exists within the genre of the "strong women", similar to Cleopatra, Salome and Dalila.  The story of Roman Charity inspired many master painters during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The story of Cimon is accompanied by an almost identical story recorded by Roman historian Valerius Maximus, (AD 23–79), of a jailed plebeian woman who was nursed by her daughter. Reporting this to the judicial authorities, the mother’s sentence was remitted. While the guard hesitated and wondered if perhaps what he saw was against nature (an act of lesbianism), he concluded that in fact it was an example of the first law of nature, which is to love one’s own parents. The Flemish painter, Sir Peter Paul Rubens, is known to have painted several versions of it, like other great painters like Rembrandt in 1811 & Caravaggio in 1606.  

I wanted to represent the younger generation nurturing the elders who are alone, struggling and ignored by society. I was always fascinated by Michelangelo’s "La Pietà" statue at the Vatican which I personally witnessed. And of course, the "Virgin" Mary breastfeeding baby Jesus; which later in life I found out it´s Isis breastfeeding her son, Horus.  It is the most powerful act of Nature, besides giving birth.  That's why men are so afraid of women, because we are the true life creators...  

« Charity brings to life again those who are spiritually dead. »  Thomas Aquinas.