Frida Kahlo: A Life With Disability

Frida Kahlo: A Life with Disability “They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn’t. I never painted dreams. I painted my reality” (Frida Kahlo). Frida Kahlo was a famous Mexican painter born on July 6, 1907. She was only 47 years old when she just days after her final exhibit. Frida’s life was filled with a lot of pain, both emotional and physical. In her childhood, Frida was slightly disabled from polio. Later on when she was eighteen, she was in a terrible bus accident, which destroyed her body. She had broken her spinal column and her pelvis, which lead to her having metal rods insert through her spine and pelvis. This left her bed ridden, but it didn’t destroy her soul. While she was destined to never walk again, she didn’t let her disability,

Even though she was physically disabled, she sometimes didn’t portray this in her paintings. She really did not indentify herself as a member of the disable community. In the article “Of Our Spiritual Strivings” by W.E.B Du Bois he says, “-a world which yields him no true self consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity” (131). We can see how Frida Kahlo had a double consciousness. Even though in her own reality she suffered from a disability due to her horrible accident that left her to many emotional sufferings, in her paintings she portrayed herself as a beautiful woman. The painting called “Self Portrait in a Velvet Dress” was painted days after her horrible accident. In this painting we see how even though she was in horrible pain and lying in a bed not being able to walk, she saw her self as a beautiful elegant women with no disabilities. Most of her paintings had to do with her husband and her emotions but very few dealt with her physical