SELF-PORTRAIT WITH CROPPED HAIR
Throughout this year I have conducted research on hair under the theme of identity and representation and to conclude the endeavour I decided on making a tribute to Frida Kahlo’s Self-portrait with cropped hair (1940) oil painting. Since the shaving of my own hair at the start of this year as a social experiment, the artwork has grown in meaning to me significantly.
Kahlo’s painting meticulously documents her newly androgynous self and challenges concepts of femininity and gender roles. The painting transfers the gender classification of her usual self-portraits with long hair and wearing of a dress as the classical manifestation of femininity by prompting an alternative model of androgynous beauty which expresses both male and female qualities. Kahlo is altering the seemingly frivolous setting of a haircut towards a psychologically loaded site of not merely self exploration but also the social myths related to womanhood which seamlessly integrates the complexities of the figurative and the political and argues notions of prescribed beauty, power relations and creative agency. The piece is an “early feminist masterpiece” and it was such an honour to attempt at recreating the image.
Berenice Albertse, Self-portrait with cropped hair (after Frida), 2022
