Join Mexican me for a deep-dive into the Sacred Heart as both a religious icon and a vessel of emotional, spiritual, artivist, and creative meaning and practice.

Flaming, pierced, wrapped in thorns, and often bleeding, the Sacred Heart is an enduring symbol in Christian iconography, associated with ecstatic devotion and mystical suffering, and continually evolving through colonial art, folk traditions, social resistance, anatomical studies, milagros, and contemporary reinterpretations. Widespread since seventeenth-century France, it represents divine love, redemptive suffering, and the open vulnerability of Christ’s heart, offered to humanity as both wound and refuge. Spiritually, it evokes a heart that feels deeply, suffers willingly, and burns in the name of love; artistically, it has been adopted and reimagined by the faithful, the oppressed, and the creative alike. It lives in cathedrals and tattoos, in embroidery and graffiti, in altars and activist posters—always intimate, always aflame.

Over the course of 5 weeks, we will examine this potent symbol across eras, cultures, and artistic media, while reflecting on our own symbolic and emotional relationship to it. Each 90-minute session will combine illustrated lectures, storytelling, and mindful creative prompts with historical and visual analysis grounded in personal reflection. As a final project, participants will be invited—if they wish—to create their own symbolic or devotional object inspired by the Sacred Heart, using any medium aligned with their creative practice. No artistic or religious experience is necessary