CRUEL BEAUTY

CRUEL BEAUTY examines the self-portrait paintings of Frida Kahlo and her articulation of self and identity through the creation of an innovative feminine vocabulary. The work explores the representation of her sexual subjectivity in the body of self-portraits produced in her short life time, some of which were painted in a state of physical disability and created in the shadow of her legendary husband - socialist Mexican muralist and revolutionary Diego Rivera. An examination of the self-portrait paintings produced by Frida Kahlo, informed by her diary, personal letters, poems, and photographs, broadens the conventions of subjective self beyond the generic patterns of autobiographical narrative, characteristic of a masculine Western self . In Kahlo s self-portraits the the urban Mexican proletarian woman draws stylistically from the domain of European self-portraiture, early studio photographic portraiture, biographical Mexican Catholic retablo art, and the legacy of ancient Aztec Indian symbology of self.

Autorentext

Tatiana Pentes produced "Cruel Beauty" through an interdisciplinary masters program in Art History & Theory at the University of Sydney (1999). Tatiana graduated with a Doctor of Creative Arts, "Black Box: Painting A Digital Picture of Documented Memory", in Humanities & Social Sciences at the University of Technology, Sydney (2006).