The CoronaVirgin: Marian iconography between street art, social media, and lieux de mémoire

Zusammenfassung

The article discusses the visual reinterpretations of Marian iconography in the context of the global outbreak of SARS-Co V-2. Several wellknown iconographic themes that originated in the Middle Ages have been adapted, adjusted, and disseminated via social media or as street art disseminating social and political messages. In this sense, the article offers an overview of several visual productions that reinterpret familiar Marian depictions, particularly in Italy and Spain, through processes of contemporaneization that blur the boundaries between the religious and the sacred, and the addition of new iconographic attributes. The article argues that the display of several such new iconographies in specific places of veneration has the function of perpetuating the memory of Mariophanic miraculous events.