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Many artists have painted their own portraits, but Kahlo\u2019s 1944 painting The Broken Column<\/em> stands out as a particularly vivid example of an artist using her own body (and, in Kahlo\u2019s case, her own pain and suffering) in her art. This oil-on-masonite painting was created shortly after Kahlo underwent spinal surgery to address an injury she suffered in a traffic accident at 18 years old. \u201cKahlo\u2019s body, punctured by countless nails and torn open to reveal a crumbling architectural column as a metaphor for her own spinal column, is held together by an orthopedic brace,\u201d wrote Margaret A. Lindauer in her 1999 book Devouring Frida: The Art History and Popular Celebrity of Frida Kahlo<\/em>. \u201cAt the same time that the painting is considered to represent the accident, Kahlo\u2019s psychological and sexual health are implicated.\u201d<\/p>\n This Cuban-American performer and sculptor\u2019s Mexico- and Iowa-based \u201cSilueta\u201d series<\/a>, in which she carved and shaped her figure into the earth using materials including flowers, moss, gunpowder, and fire, has a haunting resonance in the wake of Mendieta\u2019s 1985 death. Mendieta\u2019s husband, fellow artist Carl Andre, has remained under a cloud of suspicion following her fall from the window of their 34th-floor Greenwich Village apartment. Decades after his acquittal, protestors at an exhibition of Andre\u2019s in 2017 unfurled fabric with silhouettes representing Mendieta\u2019s physical body and her work, chanting \u201c\u00bfD\u00f3nde est\u00e1 Ana Mendieta?\u201d (\u201cWhere is Ana Mendieta?\u201d).<\/p>\n Ono developed a significant conceptual practice after moving to New York from Japan in the early 1950s. One especially memorable work was 1964\u2019s Cut Piece<\/em>,<\/a> in which she sat on a stage, laid a pair of scissors in front of her, and invited the audience to cut pieces of her clothing off\u2014raising questions about agency, identity, violence, and power.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nAna Mendieta<\/h2>\n
Yoko Ono<\/h2>\n