Self-Portrait Along The Border...

• Full title: Self Portrait on the Borderline between Mexico and the United States of America

  Made: 1932

  Artist: Frida Kahlo
• the sun and moon hold sway only over Mexico, which was, this painting could be communicating, where Frida wanted to be.
• "While Diego Rivera was busy eulogizing modern industry on the walls of the Detroit Institute of Arts, Frida was yearning for the ancient agrarian culture of Mexico." Guardian article
• Sun and moon description


  a fire-spitting sun and a quarter moon are enclosed in cumulus clouds that, when they touch, create a bolt of lightning. By contrast, the single cloud over the United States is nothing but industrial smoke spewed from four chimney stacks labelled FORD.
• the American cloud besmirches the American flag, whose artificial stars have none of the dazzle of Mexico's real sun and real moon.
• Mexicanidad 


  Mexican-ness: at this period a new pride in Mexican identity emerges, combining pre-Hispanic indigenous culture, the Spanish colonial past, and post-revolutionary modern future.
• • Kahlo stands facing forwards, looking at the viewer, but with her head turned to her right in three quarter pose towards the Mexican half of the work
  • Appears somewhat demure and serious, her lips pursed.
  • Her hands are held down and crossed over her body in a contained or defensive pose.
• • Her hands are held down and crossed over her body in a contained or defensive pose.
  • In her right hand, on the Mexican side, she holds a cigarette, perhaps a symbol of modernity and sophistication (smoking was considered masculine in this period so for a woman it could be a sign of liberation).
  • In her left, on the US side, a Mexican flag. The act of crossing her arms creates a gesture that visually links the two sides.
• the painting has been described as “an allegory of cultural conflict” between the USA and Mexico, which Kahlo experienced firsthand during her time living there. She had married the muralist Diego Rivera who was commissioned by Rockefeller to paint murals in New York City’s Rockefeller Center.
• • Kahlo was unhappy in the US and wanted to return to Mexico. Clearly depicted.
  • This painting rises the question of if she bridges the two worlds or is she caught between them?
  • Mexico & US - visual paradox suggests Kahlo's identity struggles
• The painting also reflects Kaholo’s own sense of dual identity - she was born in Mexico but spent much of her life in the United States. It can be seen as an exploration of her own self-identity.
• What are the aspects she presents about herself that are unconventional in this painting?

  Unconventional: unplucked eyebrows, coral bead necklace, cigarette, prominent nipples, dominates an open landscape; full length suggests high status; naïve realism
• What are the conventional aspects of self-representation in this painting?


  • Lips and cheeks lightly rouged, hair with central parting, neatly plaited and coiled on her head, pale pink dress with short sleeved tight fitting bodice, gathered full length skirt with three tiers of ruffles (traditional in Mexico but not contemporary dress in 1930s US), matching pink slippers peep out beneath
  • gives her Spanish first name (Carmen) and married surname (Rivera)
• She stands on a stone pedestal, overlapped by a leaf on the left and with an electric plug fitting on the right, inscribed ‘Carmen Rivera / pintó su re-/ -trato en el año d- 1932’, ‘Carmen Rivera painted her portrait in the year 1932’
• References to Mexican indigenous culture relate to her own heritage, identity, and fertility; some broken and ruined


  • Ceramic figures are the domestic, funerary art of a Jalisco figure, Colima figure, connected to fertility, and a simply carved stone skull.
  • Kahlo accurately painted specific archaeological ceramic figures from photographs and books Diego Rivera brought to Detroit – the first time she included these indigenous sculptures in her art
• Feminist reading


  • Kahlo depicts specific artefacts to legitimize female power as a continuing tradition
  • She had miscarried her child with Diego Rivera a month before painting this work
• Socio-historical context

  • Sun/moon or day/night are dualities in many ancient religions; forked lightning hits the ruined temple; Teotihuacan has huge Pyramids to the Sun and Moon (200-250)
  • Kahlo was a Marxist and not religious though she uses ancient Mexican and Christian religious iconography to address spiritual issues.
• Nature vs Industrialisation

  • Healthy plants indigenous to Mexico signify life and nature; cactus, lily, marigold
  • Right, industrialisation of the Ford River Rouge car factory, city skyscrapers, modern inventions, with metal ducts, stylised crucibles that resemble faceless marching figures. The US flag covered by pollution from factory chimneys
• Foreground

  • In the foreground, right, three circular industrial objects: a motor with trailing wires join the plant roots, an industrial light fitting and light bulb with rays resembling sun rays, a rusted heating element, projecting like an eye on a stalk
  • May connect to visit to Edison Institute Museum and the creation of electric light
• Bretos - "We might say that her self-portraits present her image but at the same time a riddle."
• Deffebach - "colours are diminished by air pollution, anthropomorphic machines, and electrical appliances whose wires descend into the earth. Kahlo portrays Mexico as ancient and eternal. A Precolumbian pyramid in ruins dominates the horizon. The sun and moon appear simultaneously in the sky above the pyramid."
• Deffebach (USE THIS) - "Although Kahlo represents Mexico in ruins, her image of her homeland exudes vitality in a way that the machines and skyscrapers of the United States do not."
• Block & Hoffman Jeep - "The motley nature of her adornment at this particular time and space represents an individual and, allegorically, a nation in transition. The force of the painting lies not only in the juxtaposition of industrial sterility and pre-Columbian fertility, as critics insist, but rather in the political impact of the location and “look” of the female artist."
• 'Kahlo represents a dual form of marginalization within the essentially patriarchal norms of modernism,” she actually adds a third dimension to her representation of marginalization: a resolute association with indigenous culture, which she displays in nearly every photograph of her and in almost all her self-portraits. It seems evident that Kahlo’s sojourn in the United States caused critical self-reflection and helped crystallize her self-image.’
• …the dual nature inherent in Aztec-Mexican culture is in contrast to a monolithic North American culture that worships but one god: industry. The magnificence of Mexican culture shines forth more brightly when it is set in an international context.