FRIDA MUSE
MOOD + MUSE MAGAZINE VOLUME 1 - FRIDA KHALO
The last few days in all of my containers and temple spaces online, we have been meeting ourselves and tapping into a much more expanded view of Greatness and i say 'into' as we sometimes think of Adornment as something 'outer', out there, an exterior form in matter. The inner realms can be said to be the true start to any transformation process. It reminds of the ending of the book "The Alchemist" and the fact that everything he was seeking was within him all along.
As i read more about the Heroine's Journey and know to be true that to go within and feel is how we embody our fullness as opposed to the Hero's journey which is up and out towards spirit. The walking to the top of the mountain kind!
As women and men, we hold the poles of both masculine and feminine forces within and we are aligning with both in all moments. We can tune into which moves most naturally through us and calibrate within the natural alignments. To embody the energies that we need to harness more can take time, practice and surrender,
The returning, reclaiming of the Feminine spirit is this kind of treasure-gathering that calls us to descend, rather than ascend. To go deeper under the surface layers to both heal and reclaim the parts of ourselves we may have left outside, sometimes shut out the back door in the cold! How can we bring these fragments back home to receive even more love?
Our Greatness or as I like to call, our Majesty, may not only look like glamour, sparkles and shining lights! Our Majesty may also show up as a quiet sigh of relief, a sweet inner knowing of acceptance for ourselves as we are today, a curl of the corners of the lips and a kiss of presence that feels belly soft. An acknowledging warmth, for the life we have lived and the journey it took to arrive here now! Can we raise our glasses and celebrate that!
MUSE
This brings me smoothly on to this week's Muse... and she knows a lot about the rites of passage of the Feminine. She understands the depths of human pain, the descent into the feminine and Clothing as Art. Frida Khalo. From the first time I set eyes on her, I was in utter shock and adoration that a woman of that time (born 1907) could dress with so much vitality, wonderment and self-expression, pushing boundaries in so many ways. I soon realised that her clothing was just a smaller part of her genius.
"She was not only an openly bisexual feminist, making her way ahead of her time, but also a communist and Mexican nationalist who intertwined personal experience, ideology, and cultural commentary in her art and lifestyle."
Frida was born to a Hungarian-Jewish father and Spanish-Indigenous Mother and I bring light to this as her style was never purist, she mixed and matched different elements together, all fragments of her style formulating her own distinctive look.
Her cultivated pieces held power, matriarchal encoding from her indigenous ancestry spoke through these bright, bold pieces. She gathered shawls, dresses, skirts, regal sculpture-esque hairstyle braided with wool. Her collection from different Mexican regions and rather than wearing them for specific events or specials occasions as the culture dictated. She wore these elaborate wares each day. Her favourite costume, from Tehuantepec, a legendarily matriarchal society in Oaxaca, was a combination of a silk or velvet skirt that finished in a white pleated border, an embroidered huipil and, for fiestas, a pleated and starched ruffle framing the face.
The Jewellery statements of rings on every finger, fine crystals, trinkets of meaning braided through her strands of hair point us to these ways of dressing with meaning. Clothing as art. Adornment as a necessary path towards power.
In August 2018 I visited her "Making herself up" exhibition at the V&A dedicated to her clothing collection and it was mesmerising, visually stimulating and soul renewing to comprehend the Majesty that this woman represented. I felt like dropping to my knees and bowing to the divine wonder of these Mother-like Deities, her essence was permeating through.
INNER MOOD
The pain that Frida endured physically from becoming disabled through polio as a young child and then encountering a tragic bus accident at 18 meant that her sights of medical school soon disappeared and in convalescence, she took up Art as her life path. This 'tragedy' became her initiation to become the incredible artist that she was. After seeing the self-engineered corsets that looked like standalone installation pieces and seeing her solutions to support her body through her garments and shoes to give her the structure she needed within her body to stand tall was breathtaking. As well as her decadent, luxurious, rich, colour palettes and plush fabrications we can embrace the sculptural layers of frills, the longer line skirts, the fullness of the skirt, the easy silhouette and the shawl.
Her journey was one of great struggle and great triumph. Her vehicle for transmuting the pain of the culture was her Art and tending to the constant pain of her physical body through Adornment each gave her the drive to create such thought-provoking artwork which challenged the mainstream narrative and made her the icon that we see her as today. Some of the elements explored within her works meant she was bringing light to politics, post-colonialism, race, gender, identity and class systems of oppression.
The key elements I take from Frida are these inner feelings:
I AM MY OWN MUSE
I am the subject I want to know better
Freedom through creative expression
Warrior
Mother Queen
Matriarchy
Art as Adornment
Pain into Power
Power into Purpose
Does she conjure up emotions or expressions for you?
Can you drop a hint of Frida into your day today?
