ADITI SARAOGI | ANJUMIT NOBIS | HARENDRA KHUSHWA | VITESH NAIK | AVIJIT MUKHERJEE | VIRRAG DESAI
Frida Kahlo painted for herself. Her art transcended her pain and became her visual diary. Hauntingly surreal, her paintings are a figurative fusion of fantasy, folklore and personal narrative. Kahlo prided herself on being a "mestiza" -- a mixed-race woman, with German, Hungarian, Spanish and indigenous Tehuana blood. She flaunted her style, a wild mix of Western and traditional dress. Using her clothes and ‘rebezo’ scarves as metaphor for her hybrid ethnic identity, she addressed issues of culture, nation, race and feminism through her art, and pulled the Mexican identity onto the world stage.
Frida often sketched in the style of traditional Mexican ex-voto paintings. Dipping into indigenous Mexican culture, she used bizarre colours, fantastical symbolism, and often harsh and gory content rendered in a naïve style. And as the world sat up and took notice of Frida, so also did the rich history of Mexico become fashionable. Kahlo was heavily influenced by Mexican dad, a romantic nationalism that had developed in the aftermath of the revolution. This movement aimed to replace the mindset of cultural inferiority with a pride in one’s indigenous cultures. Kahlo's artistic ambition was to paint for Mexico, and "to be worthy, with my paintings, of the people to whom I belong and to the ideas which strengthen me". Her numerous self-portraits, which she called her ‘visual diary’, speak of her hybrid identity through a unique, where she combined pre-Columbian and Christian symbols and mythology in her paintings. We see a mask-like face surrounded by fascinating visual cues and symbols pointing to deeper meanings.
Aztec mythology surfaces through the monkeys, skeletons, skulls, blood, and hearts. Hybridity (dualism) manifest themselves in her depiction of opposites: life and death, pre-modernity and modernity, Mexican and European, male and female. As Frida grew popular internationally, her native country Mexico made her an icon in return. Today, she is not only the most popular artist that Mexico ever produced, but also a national heroine to her country folk.
“From a very young age, Kahlo learned to pose, often gazing straight at the camera with her characteristic defiance. This awareness of the onlooker, through the eye of the camera, but also of her own reflection, marks the beginning of her self-made image. Later she shapes this image through her choice of clothing and her painting, especially in her self-portraits, both driven by her cultural and political commitments."