Spicy Fridas; activist and seducer pretense

Spicy Iris Mexico
Fecha: 2007-11-08 17:36:44por: Iris Atma (iris.atma@yahoo.com )


From the presentificationn of the invisible to the imitation of the appearance.
Vernant

There where the cultivated man catches an effect,
the man without culture gets a cold.
Oscar Wilde

We; Frida, eccentrics, concentrics, egocentrics, we use our body territory to reinvent us and to reflect glances and signs... The work "Spicy Fridas" is a resemantization of the Frida Kahlo painting, "the two Fridas", from 1939. Thanks to the internautical diffusion of Fernando Soto photographic glance, as much Ignacio Govea (Samantha Odensen) and I, Spicy Iris Mexico, got ourselves into that Frida-sign and we granted movement to it in a perfofaction (1) made on 2007 bordering one with the interurban, fragmentary and the virtual thing. Act in which we became related digitally with those who make selfportraits of themselves obsessively inspired by Frida: Nahum Zenil, Salma Hayek, Julio Galán, Yasumasa Morimura...

Morimura... "The artist strains itself in the more famous masterpieces of the western culture, according to him self "hegemonic and invading". Reverting the process, its Japanese face invades the West cultural icons, fills them with Eastern presence and instead of rejecting them, he takes control of them. One decade later, the author changes its icons, that now come from the popular culture." (2)

"Nahum Zenil in its obsessive self-portraits that announce the quality of an extraordinarily fine drawing creates atmospheres of ambiguous readings. The presence of thousand signs of that marginalized culture is the frame that surrounds his own image, either like bad boy, or like doubtful saint, often cruely hurted and nevertheless always with a point of irony, sarcasm and cheer sharpness." (3)

Performance; digital pretense
* "To represent it is to make present what is absent. Therefore, it is not simply to evoke but to replace.
* "Image is the daughter of Nostalgia." (4)

"Spicy Fridas" happens in a contributor territory of the procesual project "Passion 4 Freedom", through as we defend the artistic freedom to use national symbols, as well as the valuation of the feminine thing (fashion, make up) like tools of political activism and of the civil disobedience for the promotion of right changes, the questioning of the contemporary pretense glance, and our approaches to diverse artistic manifestations of the real.

I, Spicy Frida, he-she, Frida Valkyrie, simulated to be Spicy Fridas, we did not pretend because there is something of Frida in us, that is to say, its image has been adopted like synonymous of being mexican, and both we are Mexican, among other similarities with the painter I can mention the fascination of Frida by the portraits, make up, fashion, drama, tragedy; we confesse us similars. In relation to Frida Valkyrie, who is Ignacio Govea in its Samantha Odensen rol, the question arises: Do the transsexuals actions participate of similarities with the transplants revolution developed by Valery? (5) Are the transsexual actions somehow a pretense relative to gender, independently of the sexual orientation (6)? That is to say, the man who accepts or enjoys Stockings, wigs, make up and other corporal accessories, when unlike the time of the palaces, nowadays are restricted for use of the women, journeys - with no need of surgical transplants- apparently to the feminine identity, he does not pretend it nevertheless since he recognizes his feminine side and emotivity, and, at the end of the day, biologically he continues being a man. Spicy, my performance personage is a combination of visual work (personal outfit and photographic documentation) , scenic work (actions and anecdotes that I inherit to my personage), of personality (history of life, character profile), etcetera. That is to say, I do not pretend to be Spicy since when I conduct the performance actions that I sign with her name, I am Spicy, in a kind of a rol game, with a much greater identification to the one of a theater actor, who can interpret a paper independently if he agrees or not with the personage created by the dramatist. For me, author of the concept, director and contributor of the actions, the performance personalities that I interpret are reflect and coincident with my deeper being in real terms like personal values, convictions and objectives. Nevertheless, these personalities have a pretense/ simulacral connotation since the life history; the wardrobe and many other characteristics of Spicy differ from my daily personal identity.

"To dissimulate is to pretend not to have what one has. To simulate is to pretend to have what one has not. One sends to a presence, the other to an absence. But the question is more complicated, since to simulate it is not to pretend: "That who pretends a disease can simply put in bed and make think that he is ill. That who simulates a disease pretends to have some symptoms of it" (Littré). Thus, then, to pretend, or to simulate, leaves the reality principle intact: there is one difference clear, only masked. On the other hand the simulation returns to question the difference of the "true thing" and the "false thing", the "real thing" and the "imaginary thing". The one that simulates, is or not ill counting where upon it shows "true" symptoms? Objectively, it is not possible to treat him neither like patient nor like not-ill. (7)

"In the beginning we watch God through his efigie; later the efigie remembers God and, immediately afterwards, it causes that we forget him; and, in the end, the scuptor makes a god of himself. Presence, representation, simulation. The three moments that articulate the western history of the glance, on great scale, seem to be found, on one smaller scale, in each artistic cycle. Like in a hologram, where each part is the whole, every plastic sequence narrates all the film. The image, initially created by fusion, becomes a copy of the real thing and, finally, in social decoration." (8)

It is important to mention the difference between: 1. "To work from the natural one" what it had been possible in case I had been contemporary of, and close to the presence, to the original one, of Frida, or 2. "To work from its efigie and representation" , and I have to say that although I had the opportunity to see real works of Frida thanks to the exhibition presented by the centenary of its birth in the Beauty Arts Palace, what detonated and was the base for my creation is 3. "To work from the simulation", from the marketing simulation as much of Frida as of her work it is that I generated my speech. From equal way, the "Spicy Fridas" action arrives to the spectator non thanks to the transparency: the illumination on present objects or subjects, but thanks to the trans-appearance, that is to say, by an appearance given by the transmission of the information through documents (texts and images), by an indirect light, virtual and technological.

The two Spicy Fridas
The two Fridas is a work of 1939 wich travels between the nationalism and the Mexican surrealism, and a successful mediatic contemporary image representative of the Frido-manía. A Frida dresses somewhat European style, whereas the other uses clothes that remember the popular culture, this mestization interlaces the veins of the heart, whereas the European cuts a vein with a surgical instrument, the Latin connects her circulation to an cameo style image of young Diego. The sky is cloudy with I sound of storm...

Spicy Fridas is a work from 2007 that sends us to the neomexicanism and to an activist seduction from triviality, consequence of the multireproduced Frida pictures. From the “The two Fridas” painting is generated a series of images: The two Fridas in carmine share fruits. Both pose in front of a landscape with a sun, national symbol. The pair rests in a bed, wearing the green national soccer selection t-shirt and a t-shirt with the name of Mexico. Spicy Frida adorned in red, with a resplandor and over a sarape, rest in front of the map of Mexico city. Spicy with red roses and filigrana jewelry, biper leather boots, net stockings, miniskirt, lace blouse, and feathers, appears to the spectator with a flury pillow with the image of the virgin Maria. Frida Valkyrie appears dressing white and showing an abdominal scar, with a rebozo soldaderas style, crowned by a resplandor and in front of a golden Mexican symbol. Frida Valkyrie rests in a sofa while she observes a Frida Kahlo book published by the INBA. (National Insitute of Beauty Arts).

To create in reference to oneself
"In Rome, until the Later Roman Empire, the public exhibition of pictures is limited and controlled. It is a too serious authority abuse. In principle, only the illustrious dead have right to the efigie, because they are by nature influential and powerful, later the powerful ones in life, and always of masculine sex. In Rome, women pictures and bust appeared delayed, after those of the men; like the right to the image, privilege of the deceased nobles, has been granted delayed to the common citizens, towards the aim of the republican era" (9)

The metamorphosis of herself, in Frida Kahlo’s work of has been one of the contemporary motivations to adopt her as a sign. Nadia Ugalde Gómez, writes: “She created an art whose reference was herself (...) Frida Kahlo recreated herself on numerous occasions by means of the self-portrait. Her images appeared in her earliest works from the mid-1920s, watercolors of Coyoacán. Between 1925 and 1927 she did her first three self-portraits in different modalities, converting her own imageinto the vital axis of her painting. In some 80 self-portraits she portrayed herself fulllength, half-length, from her shoulders up, seated, lying down, or just her face. She always appears facing the viewer, never in profile, dressed in rebozos, huipiles, frilly slips, traditional jewellry and accesories, all of wich she combined and wore regally. Frida’s portraits and self portraits allowed her to recreate colors, textures, fabrics, jewels, flowers, plants, animals, and all manner of adornments worn by her distinguished models, including herself, enriching them with their corresponding emotional and psychological charge. Frida Kahlo restored the Colonial custom, widely depeloped during the nineteeth century, of including written references in her portraits after 1931, through the use of the scroll”. (10)

In the past the image is a privilege reserved to few, and in modernity is democratize the access from the citizenship to the image. Nevertheless, it is in the hipemodernity when the form to relate us to image gets more complex. It approaches the dichotomy to have or not having the access to the creation of the image, the image fiction or reality, and in addition, as Baudrillard affirms, we face diverse image successive phases that would be: Reflection of a deep reality; sacrament. Mask and denaturation of a deep reality; maleficent order. Mask of the absence of a deep reality; spell. Independence of all type of reality, since it is its own and pure pretense, simulation where the object and the substance have disappear, seduction, persuasion or dissuasion from the triviality, strategy of neo-reality and hyperreality. "Spicy Fridas" puts in debate and controversy sacred images by the state nation due to its deep relation with the national identities, although some of their strategies can be interpreted like a maleficent order due to the activism and the civil disobedience that imply to unmask structures and to propose liberties. The popular fashionable tools and icons soften or disguise the deep and political activity in a contrast with the triviality and the sorcery. The work as a whole inhabits the activist and seducer pretense...

1, Perfofaction: performance, documentary and fiction.
2. Frederique Drilhon Von-Arx. “Yasumasa Morimura. Un diálogo interior con Frida Kahlo. (An inner dialogue with Frida Kahlo). Casas & Gente. Vol. 22. No. 217. Pag. 23
3, Jorge Alberto Manrique. Arte y Artistas Mexicanos del Siglo XX. (Mexican art and Artists of XX Century). CONACULTA. Mexico 2000. Pag. 67.
4, Régis Debray. Vida y muerte de la imagen. (Life and death of the image). Spain, Paidós. 1994. Pág. 34
5, Valery says, approximately, that three great revolutions exist: the one of the transports (industrial revolution), the transmissions (telephone, mass media, Internet) and the transplants (genetic manipulation and surgery operations).
6. Between transsexuals we found heterosexuals, homosexuals, bisexuals and poliamor.
7, Jean Baudrillard. La precesión de los simulacros. (The precession of the pretenses). Spain. 1993. Pág. 12
8, Régis Debray. Vida y muerte de la imagen. (Life and death of the image). Spain, Paidós. 1994. Pág. 140.
9, Régis Debray. Vida y muerte de la imagen. Life and death of the image. Spain, Paidós. 1994. Pág. 24
10. Nadia Ugalde Gómez. Frida Kahlo: The Metamorphosis of the Image.

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Fecha: 2007-11-08 17:36:44por: Iris Atma (iris.atma@yahoo.com )