Frida’s National Identity Through Art
National Identity is linked to cultural practices and appeals to ones emotions. It is a sense of a nation as a whole represented by distinctive traditions, culture, and language. A national identity is created it is not a natural attribute of someone. In the movie Frida, she is a Mexican painter who is best known for her famous self-portraits. Frida’s paintings as well as her self contribute to a national identity in many different forms especially in art.
When Frida was a young woman she married Diego Rivera, a prominent Mexican painter. The day they married each other Frida adopted the Mexican indigenous dress. She wore a skirt, blouse, and a long scarf covering the head and shoulders (a rebozo) that she borrowed from the maid. Her desire to adopt this native tradition of dress was inspired by her attempt to please her husband Diego. The form of dress she chose could also be considered as a political statement: post-revolutionary ethics. When Frida arrived in the US she was wearing long skirts, blouses and huge flowers in her hair. This could be seen as Mexican revolutionary beliefs or…show more content… The second portrait Frida painted was when she and Diego got married. Her style of painting in this particular self- portrait “Time Flies” when she paints herself in a white dress with a grey necklace and grey earrings, and her hair is split in the middle; has a Mexican folk style of painting. The same style her husband Diego painted in his murals. Prior to this portrait her style of painting could have been considered to be a renaissance style now she had adopted the bright, vivid, and vibrant colors of the Mexican culture. This was a constant trend seen throughout all the paintings shown in the movie and continued throughout the rest of her life. This practice of art Frida chose created a symbolic value in the Mexican