Embroidered (re)readings of Frida Kahlo

Embroidered (re)readings of Frida Kahlo –
an interwoven biographical action-research on women handcraft
Edla Eggert1
During the last years I have conducted a research project about the
educational processes involved in the production of handcrafts made by
women in the state of Rio Grande do Sul (Eggert, 2011). In the development
of this empirical research I met an embroideress: Ivone Junqueira. In her
recent work, she develops different textile handcraft techniques accomplishing
what I call a rereading of Frida Kahlo’s work. I understand them as rereadings2, in the context of what Feminist theories have accomplished in the
last century through a circle of hermeneutical suspicion (Fiorenza,1988;
Eggert, 1999), considering that in her work, she doesn’t only reproduce the
images and pictorial discourses created by Frida Kahlo, but interweaves her
own life experiences, and those of other women, in a process of recreating
those images and discourses for a contemporary audience, at the same time
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re-signifying the many times diminished and patronized handcraft work
developed by women. Those re-readings are accomplished through needles,
pieces of cloth and strings in a unique way and are invited to an analytical
dialogue in my process of research seeking to make visible the creation in the
handcraft made by women and the educational processes resulting from it.
The handcraft technology has been made invisible throughout the
centuries and that women have a long history of intimacy with strings,
needles, pieces of cloth, looms and scissors. On the other hand, the industrial
technology caused an almost everlasting detachment from manual work.
However, little by little, the abilities of manual embroidery, weaving, lace and
many other manual crafts that unleash a thinking doing, as it was emphasized
by Richard Sennet (2009), which leads us to creation, are restored.
In Brazil, just as in many other parts of the world, including Mexico,
there are admirers of Frida Kahlo and her work. Her life and her work inspire
people beyond the borders of who she was and what she accomplished,
through the knowledge that she was able to create on many levels. Her life as
a woman and her work as a painter are so mixed together that they become
an artifact that, as a process of knowledge production about herself and her
world, enables the re-creation of this process in new educational and
epistemological ways. In the recognition of the knowledge produced in the
manual craft, the beautiful and the useful – as pointed out by Otávio Paz
(1979) – have to be taken in account. In that sense, I want to make way for
the embroideress who was infatuated and inspired by the history of that
painter to the point of engaging her in a recreation process. And I join her, for
I admire the work of Frida Kahlo as well, and have engaged myself in a
process of re-reading her work through texts in the organization of a book that
proposes a dialogue with paintings in the context of Latin-American Theology
(Eggert, 2008).
The Feminist movement has been a space for denunciations,
experimentations and announcements. Embroidery takes us to the feminine
daily life which has been forgotten and ignored in almost every area of
knowledge, even in Feminism, for embroidering was, to a great extent, a
representation of reclusion, resignation and oppression. Choosing traditional
women’s work, in the sense that it has been delegated to women as an
unimportant task, such as handcraft, and in this case embroidery, makes it
possible to compose scenes and weavings so that other (re)readings may
happen. In the process of accomplishing my empirical research with artisan
women, still made invisible, I came to understand that they seek
acknowledgement. Therefore, in this paper, I seek to initiate a dialogue with
some artwork craftly embroidered with a technique that we will call
overlapping of fabrics recreated by Ivone Junqueira from Frida Kahlo’s
paintings (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012). The life stories of the embroideress, the
plastic artist and the researcher (myself) will be the motive of a narrative
production which aims to demonstrate the possibilities that may arise when
we are open for a methodological dialogue that instigates reaction of the other
and the implication of this other in the research we conduct.
The beautiful and the useful of a purse
The embroideress Ivone Junqueira took to herself the idea of
innumerable possibilities of (re)reading Frida Kahlo. She took the purse, read
the book and also watched the movie about the painter’s life story. She
accepted the (in)formal and (un)conscious challenge to continue the process
of constructing educational and epistemological ways outside of the traditional
and established manuals.
The paths of the embroideress (Junqueira) and the researcher (Eggert)
crossed when I was developing a research project at Vera Junqueira’s
(Ivone’s daughter) weaving shop, in Alvorada County, in 2007. In one of my
visits, conducted during the year of 2008, the embroidress was at the shop
and saw the purse I was using that day. The purse had a reproduction of one
of Frida Kahlo’s self-portraits, handcraft made. Ivone made a comment about
how beautiful the purse’s embroidery was and someone mentioned that a
book about the Mexican painter had been released with (re)readings of her
paintings by Latin-American theologians (Eggert 2008). She was immediately
interested and in the next visit I gave her the book as a gift. The embroidress
also asked to see the purse more closely so that she could see more
thoroughly the techniques used in that handcraft work. Interweaving artifacts,
conversations and experiences, we were starting a process of recreation
which involved educational and epistemological aspects.
The overlapping of stories was immediate. Ivone is a woman who at
the time of our encounter was 67 years old, widow, grandmother, and just like
many other women, lived the confrontation of a marriage which kept her as
being wife of one man, mother, caregiver without her own name. It was not
necessary to make her many questions, Ivone’s the life story was not in the
agenda, but rather Frida’s story, (re)read in the story of Ivone. Since the first
encounter between the researcher and the embroideress, there were sayings
which were produced through embroidery and not words, as it is usually done
when interviewing a participant of a research with objective questions.
Meanwhile, Ivone was already producing her material re-readings,
embroidering Frida Kahlo’s paintings.
In 2009, the daughter of the embroidery enrolled one of the
embroidered pieces entitled “Frida Kahlo’s Holy Feast” in a contest of a
bank’s foundation. This piece won the prize and her work came to the public.
At my participant observations I registered the pieces which were being made
throughout my visits. I observed that when that piece was finished, delivered
and prized, the embroideress went through a sort of stress during the final
stage of production. Just as in any ordered work in the intellectual field, for
instance an article, a lecture. She had a pain crisis and was unable to
embroider for many months. Embroidery just like every manual work, when
repeated excessively cause injuries. In that case, the embroideress, I joked,
had embodied the character of Frida Kahlo. She was crippled.
The embroidered (re)readings of Frida Kahlo, added up to the purpose
of other readings we made of that painter, born in 1907, of the embroideress,
born 1942 and of the reasearcher, born in 1964. Women who read
themselves through the experiences of pain in their bodies as well as in their
political and affectionate life. Erotic, we produce through strong colors, daily
and autobiographical themes that reveal the materiality of our experiences,
when beauty and usefulness coincide.
Pedagogical processes in the production of Brazilian handcraft
The production of Brazilian handcraft is very rich throughout the
country. From Northeastern lace, pottery, tressed hay, knife grips, weaving,
embroidery, tricot stich, to crochet and sewing, these arts are considerably a
great measure of an almost invisible production, the source of a “creative
economy”. The question we would like to pose is why the handcraft is seen at
tourist stores, bus stations, and airports, but rarely is the connection made
between the formation of who produces this material culture with the local
development and its complex processes of production.
We suspect, based on the data that has been collected in our research
that the fact that this production is done mostly by women (and poor women)
and in their domestic space is that what makes it invisible. The knowledge of
these occupations gets lost and is less appreciated by the women
themselves, as well as for those who buy the final product.
The research done in that context is characterized by participation
along with the group. The principles of participant research and actionresearch compromise forces the one who is researching to make a way of
comings and goings back and forth with the field. Assure that the
systematization of knowledge be not only presented to be analyzed by the
academy, but for the people themselves who let our coming inside the field, a
place where our theoretical questions about the practice come to life. To
follow handcraft groups throughout Brazil with a pedagogical perspective
which is imbedded is also resound in the classrooms with the Youth and the
adults, other ways of thinking of a school for those who could not conclude
their studies in this large country.
Discovering artisans such as Ivone Junqueira in this research amplified
even more the study about women and their creation in handcraft. We learn to
make connections about the creative processes and the lives of the invisible
artisans themselves who multiplied the colors and the drawings of their daily
lives, giving new meanings for their pains.
Aiming to make the creation process more visible is the reason why we
produced this catalogue. Rehearsal of a long path which we still have much
much farther to go, meaning, engaging in dialogue between places apparently
distant: the academy and the studio/shop, each with their singularities.
The interwoven biographic
In light of the process narrated above, I present some paintings by Frida
Kahlo, embroidered by Ivone Junqueira and (re)read by some authors of the book
(Re)readings of Frida Kahlo (Eggert, 2008). It is a three-dimensional composition
taken as a methodological exercise of gathering different processes of production
which has as its background the biography as a way to the self, reminding Marie
Christine Josso (2004, 2007).
A Few Little Pricks
The painting denounces the overall reality of violence against women.
It portrays the news read by Frida Kahlo on a newspaper which caused
solidarity with the victim. The murderer stated, before the judge, that those
were only a few “blows” (piquetitos) to the woman who was disturbing him. He
did not want to kill her, only scratch her a little (Edla Eggert, 2008, p.78)
The woman from “Unos quantos piquetitos” with her body, from her
body she speaks/denounces the violence done by a man; even so, Kahlo
from her own body also speaks/denounces her pain. In both bodies the
vulnerability is evident, and why not think that this helps to identify how many
other bodies of women are victims of femicide and thus, make us shout from
those bodies that no other woman would ever be victim of such violence.
(María Laura Manrique Nava, 2008, p.175)
Self potrait with hair cut
This is a painting of impact. There is a profound silence in the selfrepresentation imagery of this work, silence as presence, meaning and
knowledge. It is a silence that speaks, that offers discourse.
Apparently this work presents Frida as non-emancipated – although
she was involved with emancipatory process of the communist movement of
her country, constructed an identity having as its references the other sex, her
feminine being seems to be rendered and remains attached to standards and
unable to filter its degrees. It seems that there is no freedom to a new
creation, the man and his stereotyped representation is the mirror and the
frame. She needs to become a man to have the acknowledgement and be
recognized as a woman. But the painting also dismantles this model, moving
it to a female body. In this economy of symbolic trades and in an inversion of
social roles representation, beauty comes along as capital trade. (Marga
Janete Ströher, 2008, p.133)
Coluna Rota
The beauty of Frida Kahlo is in the exposure of her pain just as it is
exposed on her back. The broken back is a Greek column. It is impossible not
to remember that the culture which sustains the basis of our Western
civilization for more than 2 millennia is the symbol used to present her sorrow,
which exacerbates in multiple meanings of the thorns, nails and needles all
over her body. The broken back is the column of thinking, art and all the
canons of Western civilization. In a heroic life, Frida Kahlo declared to be
unsustainable, but equally the only column which she had. (Vitor Westhelle,
2008, p.163)
The two Fridas
The two fridas calls to the creating potency of an individual and
collective identity encounter of a woman constituted by her historicity. To
recreate oneself from the self. Representing not a split, rupture between two
people in one body, but two beings intimately inter-connected living in the
same world, from imaginary/spiritual investments that are part of ourselves.
(Ana Claudia Figueroa, 2008, p. 89,90)
The little deer
The being occupying the center of the picture and of our reflection is a
creation of Frida and it is a deer! Despite Frida’s face giving her some
peculiarity, the body, the ears and the horns leave no questions left. Her
animal body carries the male marks. Her head carries make-up and
ornaments (earrings and a crown of branches), social constructions of the
feminine. The transgenderedness is an expression of only (one more) one of
the frontiers which Frida constantly crosses with tranquility and firmness in
her work. Here, the hybridization between the masculine and the feminine
sticks to each other in the hybridism between animal and woman. (Musskopf,
2008, p.105)
Conclusions still in process: three-dimension biographical actionresearch
The characters in this research (re)read themselves and constitute
themselves. In our way of interpreting her story, Frida is (re)read in her works
and she also rered herself. On the other, we who found her and related to her
story, reread ourselves and (re)encountered ourselves, thus producing a way
for another interpretation of ourselves.
At the moment I started visiting Ivone Junqueira and registering her
production/creation, I gave her at each meeting, I actualized and provoked
methodological elements which reminds the action-research. But not that one
ordered to solve a certain problem, rather one research which will get shaped
as we interact and expose ourselves in the different places we occupy in the
research.
Would that be a way to contribute to amplify the concept of actionresearch?
References
EGGERT, Edla. A apatia de quem olha: a violência naturalizada. In.:
EGGERT, Edla (Org.) [re]Leituras de Frida Kahlo, por uma ética estética da
diversidade machucada. Santa Cruz do Sul: EDUNISC, 2008. p. 75-83.
FIGUEROA, Ana Claudia. As duas Fridas e eu. In.: EGGERT, Edla (Org.)
[re]Leituras de Frida Kahlo, por uma ética estética da diversidade
machucada. Santa Cruz do Sul: EDUNISC, 2008. p.84-93.
JOSSO, Marie-Christine. Experiências de vida e formação. São Paulo:
Cortez, 2004.
JOSSO, Marie-Christine. A transformação de si a partir da narração de
histórias de vida. In. Revista Educação. Porto Alegre/RS, ano XXX, n. 3 v. 63,
p. 413-438, set./dez. 2007.
MANRIQUE NAVA, María Laura. Quando el dolor in-digna: genera vida! In.:
EGGERT, Edla (Org.) [re]Leituras de Frida Kahlo, por uma ética estética da
diversidade machucada. Santa Cruz do Sul: EDUNISC, 2008. p.165-179.
MUSSKOPF, André. Veadagens Teológicas. In.: EGGERT, Edla (Org.)
[re]Leituras de Frida Kahlo, por uma ética estética da diversidade
machucada. Santa Cruz do Sul: EDUNISC, 2008. p.101-120.
STRÖHER, Marga Janete. Autorretrato con el pelo cortado – A fabricação de
um corpo estético de rupturas. In.: EGGERT, Edla (Org.) [re]Leituras de Frida
Kahlo, por uma ética estética da diversidade machucada. Santa Cruz do Sul:
EDUNISC, 2008. p.121-138.
WESTHELLE, Vitor. Santa Frida com aura e aroma. In.: EGGERT, Edla
(Org.) [re]Leituras de Frida Kahlo, por uma ética estética da diversidade
machucada. Santa Cruz do Sul: EDUNISC, 2008. p.157-164.
EGGERT, Edla. Processos educativos no fazer artesanal de mulheres do Rio
Grande do Sul. Santa Cruz do Sul: EDUNISC, 2011.
EGGERT, Edla. A mulher e a educação: possibilidades de uma releitura
criativa a partir da hermenêutica feminista. Estudos Leopoldenses – série
Educação, São Leopoldo, v. 3, n. 5, jul.-dez . 1999. P.19-28.
FIORENZA, Elisabeth Schussler. In memory of her: a Feminist Theological
Approach of Christian Origins. New York: The Crossroad Publishing
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PAZ, Otavio. In/mediaciones. Barcelona: Editorial Seix Barral, 1979.
Researches conducted by Professor Edla Eggert (Unisinos)
Group contributor:
Marli Brun (PhD student)
Amanda Motta Castro (PhD student)
Cintia Andrea Teixeira Dornelles (PhD student)
Gisele Heckler (PhD student)
Drª Marcia Alves da Silva (UFPel)
Marcia Regina Becker (MA student)
Douglas Rosa da Silva (PIBIC) (Undergraduate student)
Drª Maria Clara Bueno Fischer (UFRGS)
Dr. Telmo Adams (Unisinos)
Dr. Danilo Streck
Dr. André Sidnei Musskopf
Drª Nancy Cardoso Pereira
Esp. Vera Junqueira (Technical scholarship Cnpq)
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