Marina Abramović is an artist from Yugoslavia. She chooses to use performance as her form of expression in the art world. She is well known for her exhausting performances that are usually very lengthy. She is also a photographer, but in each picture there is an act, or performance, being done.
Frida Kahlo was a Mexican artist from the early 1900’s. She became a famous painter, and is often linked to her husband Diego Rivera. Frida’s paintings are a self expression of who she thinks she is, and of what has happened to her in her short life. She used vibrant colors and graphic details in her paintings to express the pain that she went through.
Cui Xiuwen is a photographer and painter from China. She does many series on social criticism, which has been put on the back burner with her new found interest in womanhood. She specifically is interested in portraying issues like pregnancy and maternity. She has a compassion for other women, and wants to express that through her self-portrait paintings.
These three artists, very different from each other, all share a common theme. They all do self-portraits of their lives, feelings, and thoughts. They each have their own way of expression, but they all are expressing the womanhood, and sufferings that women go through. You can fine similarities in each of the artists’ pieces. Marina Abramović portrays the “typical woman roles” in some of her photographs. This is similar to Frida Kahlo in a way because she also portrays some “women roles” while she is showing her pain. In one of her paintings, she painted what is meant to be interpreted with a meaning of pregnancy. The painting was actually about the baby that she lost. This can also relate to Cui because she is now doing a lot of work with maternity and pregnancy. All three women express their roles in society, while voicing what is a major issue in women today. They are trying to portray a stereotype, a common issue, or a personal account through different styles and mediums, and I feel that each woman achieved their goal.
