Frida Assignment

 

“But Kahlo did not conceal her pain, revealing her casts and leather braces with metal buckles in her work and turning her plaster corsets into art with elaborate designs of flowers, even a hammer and sickle.” 

Unlike a lot of people I feel like Kahlo did the most expressive job at exposing her pain and repurposing it to make art, like the second skin casts she had. She took them and made them art. The idea of recognizing what has hurt me, and turning it around is something that definitely inspired me, so the picture of myself on top of my brain is something that I wanted to put there because just my identity itself is something I struggled with and I put it in the forefront for everyone to see. I also put a lot of symbolic linework around my body to emphasize my ancestry and their impact. 

“People have described her as broken and fragile, but she was strong and accomplished a tremendous amount in her lifetime.”

I think that’s something that happens often in regards to storytelling about women, they dumb them down and make them play into that stereotypical role of a woman, where they could never possibly be strong, independent and accomplished. The erasure of taino people is something I wanted to bring in but in a less traditional way, I think having the two spirits behind me (kind of speaking to me in like a guidance manner. And the sun symbol shining over me, and the animal that is native to my country was super important. I also wanted to keep my individual self the same, with no setting the scene because it’s the reality of who I am and how I present myself. The red fiery bold hair that is curly, dark under eye. And like Frida and Her symbolic eyebrows my under eyes and curly hair play the most importance to me. Especially because they were my biggest insecurities growing up, and I learned to make them my favorite part of myself. 

“Mutu addresses a similar issue in the large-scale Le Noble Savage (2006), which shows a grass-skirted, hairy­-armpitted woman communing with nature—birds fluttering overhead, a snake encircling her body and a snarling lion incorporated into her shoulder.”

This quote from last week's reading was important to me because it symbolized different features on the body to represent the person in it. I think that’s why I spent the most time trying to figure out how to make my most proud feature (my hair) into something related to nature. I turned my literal hair into leaves.