Abstract
Many artworks created during the Mexican Revolution (1910-1940) and in the years immediately following it contained nationalist themes that served to reinforce the importance of maintaining a traditional Mexican identity amongst the Mexican people. As a result, many Mexican artists questioned such traditional representations. This can be seen in images of Mexican women that depict them within the perimeters of an idealized traditional Mexican aesthetic. However, as a burgeoning feminist agenda arose, women were urged to present themselves as free from the oft-oppressing patriarchal traditions of Mexico's past. Now choosing between the ideologies of their pasts and promises of a more free future, many women began to question the ways in which they chose to represent themselves. However, as evident in Manuel Alvarez Bravo's Woman of the Isthmus Combing Isabel Villasefior's Hair(1933), Portrait of the Eternal (1935), and Hair on a Patterned Floor (1940s) and in Frida Kahlo's Self Portrait with Loose Hair (1947) a deliberate reassertion of an indigenous feminine identity is indicated. This research serves to provide a deeper understanding of this reassertion as it presents itself in the images created at the time.
Recommended Citation
Lashley, Brooke
(2012)
"A Displacement of the Self: How Manuel Alvarez Bravo Uses Hair to Represent the Reassertion of an Indigenous Feminine Identity in Postrevolutionary Mexico,"
Augsburg Honors Review: Vol. 5, Article 8.
Available at:
https://idun.augsburg.edu/honors_review/vol5/iss1/8