From Frida fashion dolls to little clay Friditas, everyone has, at some point, encountered the countless mementoes that reinvent the great Mexican artist and keep her alive in popular memory. Her own painting was steeped in Mexican folk art and the connection has turned out to be curiously reciprocal. Artists, activists and academics around the world have been inspired by her life, art and persona, coming up with extraordinary and at times very curious tributes to her.
Featuring a staggering variety of Frida objects, images and souvenirs in every conceivable material, this book traces some of the trails that Frida herself laid; a legacy which allows people to create their own countless versions of her.
The ways in which she is repeatedly re-labelled and re-invented is unprecedented in the world of art. Is this the global appropriation of Frida as an icon? Or is there another way of thinking about the phenomenon?
About the Author
Gaby Franger is an academic focussing on intercultural action projects around women’s studies. She also has a vast and irrepressible personal collection of Frida memorabilia, which she has catalogued through this project.
About Tara Books
Tara Books is an independent publishing house started in 1994 by Gita Wolf and specialising in the visual arts. Still, many of the books published by Tara Books defy strict genre classification, with titles ranging from children’s picture books, through graphic novels, to photography and book art.
