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Frida Kahlo: Trauma, Abjection, and Affect

Frida Kahlo and the Abject

Some of Kahlo’s paintings appear so explicitly violent or ghastly; it makes it difficult to look at for long periods of time, but this is also what intrigues the audience. Her graphic presentation of broken bodies and medical discourse adhere to Kristeva’s notion of abjection in that the body adopts a liminal state binding and confounding the: “…inside and outside, pleasure and pain, cleanliness and filth, life and death”. According to Alonso, Kahlo creates her art according to what she understands as the limit because she is pushed to the limit and is challenged, for instance after her accident she painted in a way that violated how representation is understood as appropriate. Kahlo presents the spillage and overflowing of waste and fluids in the hopes of eradicating her soul of experiences in her life; in this way visual imagery evokes the trauma of her existence.

The boundaries are blurred between the corpse and the living being which is a condition of abjection where it is impossible to maintain balance and therefore creates a site for desire and danger. This, in turn, creates tension gained by a lack of boundaries, for instance language cannot convey an abjection the way that Kahlo’s imagery does, forcing the viewer’s eye to break away from the display of suffering and terror. One of many examples is presented in Without Hope where food loathing encourages nausea felt by Kahlo at the time and by the affected viewers. The disgusting food, animals and skulls are suspended above her by the wooden structure used to hold her canvasses for painting while she was bedridden. Her arms seem held down underneath her, leaving the viewer feeling uneasy, anxious, helpless, scared and claustrophobic.

Kahlo’s recreation of the abject shows a display of filth, defilement and the disruption of the consistency of the self. The internal organs depicted in her work evoke repulsion and disgust; this display of her anatomy allows the viewer to experience abjection which is perceived as a threat and is therefore rejected. Bodily fluids and blood stain and contrast the white veils normally used to cover a body part which creates a sadistic impression; this grotesque representation, according to Alonso, can be read as a: “… transgression of a prohibition”. According to René Girard, violence – as infectious – is a necessary condition to cure a community, for instance when viewers are confronted with the horrendous events depicted in an artwork, they realise that their own life is not as unfortunate as what they once thought. In this way, Kahlo and the viewer employs the Aristotelian theory of cleansing the body and soul by way of filth. Kahlo’s body and the visual abject she portrays is tragic and has a dramatic impact on the viewer; they are affected in the same way Kahlo was affected, in that the viewer embodies Kahlo’s trauma.

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This path explains how the abject image portrayed in some of Kahlo’s paintings, as well as using herself as an image, can be recognised in the characters, architecture and even themes of American Horror Story. In effect: hypothesising that Frida Kahlo and her paintings implicitly (or perhaps subliminally) influenced the creators of American Horror Story, and used her imagery as the foundation of their art.