CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/5/2023

Cinco de Mayo inspiration in 'Frida Kahlo and Arte Popular'

According to Frida Kahlo and Arte Popular author Layla Bermeo, Frida Kahlo was one of many middle-class Mexican mestizo women who "appropriated the traditional clothing, jewelry and braids of Indigenous women as a performance of nationalism, a wearable extension of collecting arte popular." In this photograph taken around 1940 by Bernard Silberstein, Kahlo—a devout collector of Mexican folk and indigenous art, including painted ceramics, embroidered textiles, religious votives, effigies and children's toys—appears in the same bida ní quichi headdress that she wore in her iconic 1943 painting, Self-Portrait as a Tehuana. In the photograph, she stands before her collection of arte popular ceramics.