Editing Frida Kahlo (section)

=== Symbolism and iconography ===
[[File:Frida Kahlo (self portrait).jpg|thumb|''[[Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird]]'' (1940), [[Harry Ransom Center]]]]
Kahlo's paintings often feature root imagery, with roots growing out of her body to tie her to the ground. This reflects in a positive sense the theme of personal growth; in a negative sense of being trapped in a particular place, time and situation; and in an ambiguous sense of how memories of the past influence the present for good and/or ill.{{sfn|Friis|2004|pp=55}} In ''My Grandparents and I'', Kahlo painted herself as a ten-year old, holding a ribbon that grows from an ancient tree that bears the portraits of her grandparents and other ancestors while her left foot is a tree trunk growing out of the ground, reflecting Kahlo's view of humanity's unity with the earth and her own sense of unity with Mexico.{{sfn|Friis|2004|pp=57}} In Kahlo's paintings, trees serve as symbols of hope, of strength and of a continuity that transcends generations.{{sfn|Friis|2004|pp=58}} Additionally, hair features as a symbol of growth and of the feminine in Kahlo's paintings and in ''Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair'', Kahlo painted herself wearing a man's suit and shorn of her long hair, which she had just cut off.{{sfn|Friis|2004|pp=55–56}} Kahlo holds the scissors with one hand menacingly close to her genitals, which can be interpreted as a threat to Rivera&nbsp;– whose frequent unfaithfulness infuriated her&nbsp;– and/or a threat to harm her own body like she has attacked her own hair, a sign of the way that women often project their fury against others onto themselves.{{sfn|Friis|2004|pp=56}} Moreover, the picture reflects Kahlo's frustration not only with Rivera, but also her unease with the patriarchal values of Mexico as the scissors symbolize a malevolent sense of masculinity that threatens to "cut up" women, both metaphorically and literally.{{sfn|Friis|2004|pp=56}} In Mexico, the traditional Spanish values of ''machismo'' were widely embraced, but Kahlo was always uncomfortable with ''machismo''.{{sfn|Friis|2004|pp=56}}

As she suffered for the rest of her life from the bus accident in her youth, Kahlo spent much of her life in hospitals and undergoing surgery, much of it performed by quacks who Kahlo believed could restore her back to where she had been before the accident.{{sfn|Friis|2004|pp=57}} Many of Kahlo's paintings are concerned with medical imagery, which is presented in terms of pain and hurt, featuring Kahlo bleeding and displaying her open wounds.{{sfn|Friis|2004|pp=57}} Many of Kahlo's medical paintings, especially dealing with childbirth and miscarriage, have a strong sense of guilt, of a sense of living one's life at the expense of another who has died so one might live.{{sfn|Friis|2004|pp=58}}

Although Kahlo featured herself and events from her life in her paintings, they were often ambiguous in meaning.{{sfn|Cooey|1994|pp=98–99}} She did not use them only to show her subjective experience but to raise questions about Mexican society and the construction of identity within it, particularly gender, race, and social class.{{sfnm|1a1=Bakewell|1y=1993|1pp=168–170|2a1=Ankori|2y=2005|2p=31}} Historian Liza Bakewell has stated that Kahlo "recognized the conflicts brought on by revolutionary ideology":

{{blockquote|What was it to be a Mexican?&nbsp;– modern, yet pre-Columbian; young, yet old; anti-Catholic yet Catholic; Western, yet New World; developing, yet underdeveloped; independent, yet colonized; ''mestizo'', yet not Spanish nor Indian.{{sfn|Bakewell|1993|p=169}}}}

To explore these questions through her art, Kahlo developed a complex iconography, extensively employing pre-Columbian and Christian symbols and mythology in her paintings.{{sfn|Helland|1990–1991|pages=8–13}} In most of her self-portraits, she depicts her face as mask-like, but surrounded by visual cues which allow the viewer to decipher deeper meanings for it. Aztec mythology features heavily in Kahlo's paintings in symbols including monkeys, skeletons, skulls, blood, and hearts; often, these symbols referred to the myths of [[Coatlicue]], [[Quetzalcoatl]], and [[Xolotl]].{{sfnm|1a1=Helland|1y=1990–1991|1pp=8–13|2a1=Barson|2y=2005|2pp=56–79}} Other central elements that Kahlo derived from [[Aztecs|Aztec]] mythology were hybridity and dualism.{{sfnm|1a1=Helland|1y=1990–1991|1pp=8–13|2a1=Dexter|2y=2005|2pp=12–13|3a1=Barson|3y=2005|3p=64}} Many of her paintings depict opposites: life and death, pre-modernity and modernity, Mexican and European, male and female.{{sfn|Helland|1990–1991|pages=8–13}}

In addition to Aztec legends, Kahlo frequently depicted two central female figures from Mexican folklore in her paintings: [[La Llorona]] and [[La Malinche]]{{sfnm|1a1=Ankori|1y=2005|1pp=31–43|2a1=Barson|2y=2005|2pp=69–70}} as interlinked to the hard situations, the suffering, misfortune or judgement, as being calamitous, wretched or being "''[[La Chingada|de la chingada]]''".{{sfnm|1a1=Barson|1y=2005|1pp=60}} For example, when she painted herself following her miscarriage in Detroit in ''Henry Ford Hospital'' (1932), she shows herself as weeping, with dishevelled hair and an exposed heart, which are all considered part of the appearance of La Llorona, a woman who murdered her children.{{sfn|Ankori|2002|pp=149–163}} The painting was traditionally interpreted as simply a depiction of Kahlo's grief and pain over her failed pregnancies. But with the interpretation of the symbols in the painting and the information of Kahlo's actual views towards motherhood from her correspondence, the painting has been seen as depicting the unconventional and taboo choice of a woman remaining childless in Mexican society.{{citation needed|date=January 2021}}

Kahlo often featured her own body in her paintings, presenting it in varying states and disguises: as wounded, broken, as a child, or clothed in different outfits, such as the Tehuana costume, a man's suit, or a European dress.{{sfnm|1a1=Cooey|1y=1994|1pp=95–108|2a1=Dexter|2y=2005|2p=12|3a1=Barson|3y=2005|3p=58}} She used her body as a metaphor to explore questions on societal roles.{{sfnm|1a1=Cooey|1y=1994|1pp=95–108|2a1=Dexter|2y=2005|2p=12}} Her paintings often depicted the female body in an unconventional manner, such as during miscarriages, and childbirth or cross-dressing.{{sfnm|1a1=Cooey|1y=1994|1p=102|2a1=Helland|2y=1990–1991|2p=10|3a1=Deffebach|3y=2006|3p=176|4a1=Barson|4y=2005|4p=58}} In depicting the female body in graphic manner, Kahlo positioned the viewer in the role of the voyeur, "making it virtually impossible for a viewer not to assume a consciously held position in response".{{sfn|Cooey|1994|p=108}}

According to Nancy Cooey, Kahlo made herself through her paintings into "the main character of her own mythology, as a woman, as a Mexican, and as a suffering person&nbsp;... She knew how to convert each into a symbol or sign capable of expressing the enormous spiritual resistance of humanity and its splendid sexuality".{{sfn|Cooey|1994|p=99}} Similarly, Nancy Deffebach has stated that Kahlo "created herself as a subject who was female, Mexican, modern, and powerful", and who diverged from the usual dichotomy of roles of mother/whore allowed to women in Mexican society.{{sfn|Deffebach|2006|pp=172–178}} Due to her gender and divergence from the muralist tradition, Kahlo's paintings were treated as less political and more naïve and subjective than those of her male counterparts up until the late 1980s.{{sfnm|1a1=Ankori|1y=2002|1pp=1–3|2a1=Cooey|2y=1994|2p=102|3a1=Helland|3y=1990–1991|3pp=8–13}} According to art historian Joan Borsa,<blockquote>the critical reception of her exploration of subjectivity and personal history has all too frequently denied or de-emphasized the politics involved in examining one's own location, inheritances and social conditions&nbsp;... Critical responses continue to gloss over Kahlo's reworking of the personal, ignoring or minimizing her interrogation of sexuality, sexual difference, marginality, cultural identity, female subjectivity, politics and power.{{sfn|Dexter|2005|p=11}}</blockquote>