Frida Kahlo’s Symbolism Crafting a Tribute to Her Legacy
“Frida’s Pain” is a 3D collage I created three years ago in honor of Women's History Month. It is a tribute to the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (1907-1954).
I read biographies of her life and researched her paintings to better understand how her work embodied her true self. I kept a journal, sketching images from observing her paintings, and designed the composition with two levels. While creating this piece, I faced several challenges within a limited space: an 8 x 10 box with one-and-three-quarter-inch depth.
The upper level represented the interior of her home, the Blue House (La Casa Azul). The open doors are cut from balsa wood, allowing her garden to be part of her living space. I painted her eyes and iconic full eyebrows (which she enhanced with eyebrow pencil) on the wall in acrylic paint. Constructing her bed was a specific challenge for me. After several attempts, I realized that distorting the perspective was necessary to accommodate the mirror over her bed. Her subject matter became self-portraits since she spent much of her life in bed. It was important to include the mirror with a reflected artwork at the correct angle for the viewer to see.
The bottom level was designed with mirrored stepped formations representing her Aztec heritage, which appear on either side of the relief sculpture of her ear lobes and lips. Earrings were a part of her dress, as she painted herself wearing earrings in her self-portraits. The clay hands illustrated in this piece were vital because they were a gift from Pablo Picasso.
Frida’s desire for motherhood became a defining symbol in her life. She nurtured her pain, loss, and disappointment in her paintings through the expression of symbols. Her painting entitled “Henry Ford Hospital,”1932, is an emotional piece as she paints herself as having miscarried in the hospital bed. The symbols she used are on a personal level as we witness the sadness of her experience. The snail represents the slow process of her miscarriage; the fetus floating above her means the loss of her son, and her broken pelvic bone is symbolic of injuries from a bus accident when she was eighteen. Her multiple injuries prevented her from being able to have a child. These images are connected with red lines representing the umbilical cord.
I used her symbols, which I drew on paper to create a pattern, then carved the images from clay and connected them with wire. The line curves to the upper lever, behind a spider monkey and her bed. Her parrots and spider monkeys fulfilled her need for mothering, and she often painted her portraits with her “children” because they were.
Despite her physical and emotional disabilities, she lived a bold life, which she expressed by wearing bright clothes, painting colorful art, being active in politics, and creating inspirational artwork influenced by her tragedies.
Have you seen Frida Kahlo’s artwork in a museum, book, or online? What did you take away from her paintings? I would love to hear your comments; please leave them below.
