Texas Trends in Art Education, 2010 Page: 22

                                
Sa  nt o  M irroring  the  Self  a n d  Others

book and Second Life. For Frida, she continually recreated herself in
dynamic paintings that visualized her complex and contradictive life
(Herrera, 1991). By exposing and troubling the multiple identities of
Frida, educators can draw relationships between postmodern theo-
ries of identity construction and curricular planning for high school art
classrooms.
A   T THEORY     OF    I) D NTITY
I     () N   R t    I () N
Much like an artist who makes a portrait, we reveal or conceal
things about ourselves. While identity is often understood as
defining us as specific, unique, and fixed individuals (Agnes, 2001),
Lacan argues that one can only know self in relationship to the other
(Huang, 2003). Bernstein (1998) defines self as the images, impres-
sions, sensory perceptions, and memories that one experiences
through life. Hall (1994) also draws connections between self and the
other, stating that identity includes "a kind of unsettled space, or an
unresolved question in that space, between a number of intersecting
discourses" (p. 9).
Intersecting discourses includes ideas about self and society.
According to Lacan, self and society are not separate. It is through
language, a social construct, that we understand self. For example,
the concept of a woman is different from that of a man. Furthermore,
our constructs of woman and man are socially and culturally dictated
and passed along through language and culture. If one knows oneself
as a woman, it is in relationship to cultural definitions of women
(Huang, 2003). The society that we live in dictates how we see
women, and men, including how a woman or a man should behave
and look. However, today's diverse and dynamic world has brought
about more options by which we can choose our constructs of our-
selves. Previous social and cultural norms of physical appearance and
behaviors are now challenged and crossed, creating sites of resis-
tance.
Recently, Jones and McEwen (2000) conceptualized a framework
for understanding identity construction. Similar to Lacan, they sug-
gested that we cannot separate the various dimensions or realms
Snw     .                        that self moves through,
.-                                  each contributing to and
changing the other. In their
study of college women,
S                they concluded that these
women's   understandings
of self depended upon the
relationship of one identity
dimension  to   another
(Jones & McEwen, 2000).
For example, some of the
women    discussed  their
identity roles in terms of
being a Black woman or a
Jewish woman, but not as
woman, Black, or Jewish
independently. Identity has
intersecting discourses that
inform one's sense of be-
ing. Jones and McEwen
(2000) assert that it is im-
perative  that educators
understand this shaping
and reshaping of self.

I     BRINGING        THEORY        INTO
PRACTIC E
Within a postmodern conception of identity, diverse factors
conflict with and contribute to identity formation. For exam-
ple, issues of power and oppression, cultural fragmentation, and rep-
resentations of reality (Efland, Freedman, & Stuhr, 1996) are issues
that Frida encountered (Herrera, 1991). As she negotiated such is-
sues, Frida combined and exchanged identities, or "tried on identi-
ties" (Udall, 2003, p.10). Her work engages us in the deeper questions
of the "why" and the "how" of social structures as they contribute to
negotiations of self and its relationship to place. As we come to un-
derstand this interchange, we should also acknowledge that the rep-
resentations we construct about self and the other is open to diverse
interpretations. Frida's world included Catholic ideologies, Commu-
nist propaganda, and Mexican Nationalism. In addition, individuals,
such as her father, sister, her husband (artist Diego Rivera), and vari-
ous other artists and political figures helped to shape her. The result
was a multiple sense of identity that was often in conflict with each
other as she merged them, doubled them, or masked them in her
portraits.
I D ENTITY      AS   A
BIG    I DEA   UNIT
Deconstructing Frida to Get Started
What does all this talk about identity mean for our students and
curriculum building? Today's youth already construct and
reconstruct self on a daily basis as they negotiate relationships within
school, home, and cyber space communities. Discussing how students
come to know self and other is important in the art classroom. As
Darts (2006) explains, the role of the educator is to "help students
make sense of their experiences and themselves, to facilitate critical
inquiry and create problem solving, and to support the creation of
meaningful interactions and interconnections between and within the
world(s) around them" (p. 11).
Using the concepts of merging, doubling, and masking, to decon-
struct issues of identity, I developed a unit on identity construction
that allowed preservice educators to explore their own dynamic
sense of self. Within this unit, Frida Kahlo's work served as exemplars
for deconstructing multiple dimensions of self. The goal of this unit
was to assist preservice educators through an awareness and critique
of the issues that surround ideas of self and other, because they will
be in charge of future classrooms where they will need to negotiate
their own students' identities and relationships to the world (Knight,
2006).
To enact such an exploration, I utilized the concept of big ideas,
life-centered issues, as a framework for unit planning; identity was
the big idea (Anderson & Milbrandt, 2002). The concepts of merged,
doubled, and masked identities were discussed using the art and life
of Frida Kahlo.
The Merged Self
Lacan declared "Man's desire is the desire of the other" (as cited
in Huang, 2003, p. 15). Frida constructed a "merged self" in Self-
portrait with Necklace of Thorns with Hummingbird. Frida used her
Catholic background and tormented life as catalysts for her con-
structed martyrdom (Herrera, 1991). In Self-portrait with Necklace of
Thorns with Hummingbird, Frida identifies with Christ's pain as she
dons a web of thorny branches and placed a hummingbird on top as a
crucifix. According to Herrera (1991), the butterflies in this painting
symbolize the eternal soul, or resurrection, and the bird is a meta-

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