The Tres Fridas Project

June 5 - September 12, 2021

The Cleve Carney Museum of Art and McAninch Arts Center presented the award winning Tres Fridas Project during the Frida Kahlo: Timeless exhibition. The Tres Frida’s Project was created by Reveca Torres and Mariam Pare, two artists paralyzed by a spinal cord injury. The artists met online and bonded through art, injury and a deep connection to Frida Kahlo. Soon after, they decided to recreate Frida Kahlo’s painting Dos Fridas using photography, making their own costumes and inserting themselves in the image sitting in their wheelchairs. Photographer and disability advocate, Tara Ahern, connected to the project through her own experience as a woman with muscular dystrophy and scoliosis as well as a shared love of Frida.

The women often discussed their experience as people with disabilities and how they could utilize their individual experiences and artistic talents to produce and innovate thought provoking art. Reveca, Mariam and Tara began to recreate other iconic images in art, history and pop culture and explore different facets of life and disability. The Tres Fridas collection includes recreations of Dos Fridas, Mona Lisa, Rosie the Riveter, The Last Supper, Whistler’s Mother, Old Guitarist, Christina’s World and more, all with the subjects being people with disabilities.

The artists recently were awarded a Hulu/Kartemquin accelerator grant for the documentary film Tres Fridas that documents & records Reveca, Mariam and Tara’s creative process as women artists with disabilities and authenticates the human experience of disability not as one of inspiration, shame, fear, or pity, but as one that is familiar and painted with love, pain, frustration, beauty, happiness and drive.