“In the world there are many women, of different types of clothing. I am a skirt (cholita) and I said the Mona Lisa has to be a skirt, like me cholitaCallizaya said.
Callizaya’s passion for art began when he used stones from the fields near his home to paint. This single mother of two paints on canvas after earning a college degree in fine arts.
The cholitas, usually indigenous Aymaras or Quechuas, come from poor farming communities and have long suffered from marginalization in the South American nation, which has the highest percentage of the population of indigenous ethnic groups in Latin America.
Initially she wanted to be a teacher and studied education at a public school in El Alto, Bolivia, but found her calling in art, where she learned about famous works such as the Venus de Milo and the Mona Lisa.
In college, she took the initiative to incorporate famous icons of feminine beauty with the features and clothing of Aymara women like her.