Habitus

by David Gutherz · 07/06/10

Frida Kahlo in Baden-Baden

Today–July 6,  2010–would have been famed Mexican artist Frida Kahlo’s 103rd birthday. A great champion of indigenous Mexican traditions, Kahlo’s face (which was also her greatest subject) has become for many the iconic image of Mexican womanhood.  As Ganit Ankori of the Jewish Museum points out, however, Kahlo was a shapeshifter by nature who “portrayed herself in alternative roles, appearing as an androgynous creature, a crowned nun, the Hindu goddess Parvati, a little deer, and as a Jew.” And though today some have found reason to doubt her Jewish origins, it is clear that her passion for unremitting reflection on her own porous self-identity is a pursuit at once timelessly Jewish and utterly contemporary. Consider this comment by Ilan Stavans in  an interview soon to be published in our  Mexico City issue:

“My face is many faces. For years I avoided myself in the mirror because the face I encountered always appeared to be looking at me inquisitively, demanding that I recognize it as my identity. Not only the mirror but photographs and other reflections. This isn’t easy in Western civilization, where mirrors and cameras are eternal tormentors; it’s impossible to make a move without being observed by others, and those observations being fixed forever in snapshot. My parents are obsessed with photographs. No sooner does one step into their apartment than the multiplication of faces from the past becomes apparent: family pictures on the walls, in albums, piled up on living-room tables. There is no way I am able to avoid the vicissitudes of myself whenever I am in their house. This is torture for me. It is true that our face is our façade. However, do we need to know how we look to understand who we are?”

This is the sort of question–or existential condition,really–to which Frida devoted so much. And we honor her life by continuing to reflect.