I enjoyed the part about art and identity, and as a woman I have found that the work of Frida Kahlo has given me the opportunity to explore my own identity as an aging South African woman, who started to explore her own identity and personal struggles through art. I live in Dubai and would like to develop my figurative and life drawing skills, but it is very limited in terms of opportunity and I had to resolve to focus on self portraits. This is a very personal matter for me to explore. I was influenced by the works of Marlene Dumas, Frida Kahlo, Georgia o Keefe,
I identify with her struggle to be seen as a woman painter in her own right in the time she lived. She shows personal conflicts about self, physical pain, emotional distress, angst and identity as a woman, wife, lover, artist. I enjoy the tensions she creates as well as the vulnerability to deal openly with it through her work. Her self portraits has made her in a way a celebrity after her death, everybody knows Frida from her extensive almost popular body of work. In the painting we studied, Self portrait with cropped hair, she exchanged her typical Mexican dress for a mans suit, and added a music score instead of works. The work can be seen as aggressive, but also tender and open to the viewer to interpret and learn about the artist personal life. Kahlo resisted the association with Surrealism and maintained that she never painted dreams, but painted her own reality.