"Terrestrial Verses" on the borderline: an interdisciplinary decolonial reading of Forugh Farrokhzad and Frida Kahlo

The study interrogates how Forugh Farrokhzad's poem "Terrestrial Verses" (1962) and her film The House is Black (1962) embody decolonial aesthetics when read alongside Frida Kahlo's Self-Portrait on the Borderline Between Mexico and the United States (1932). It addresses a gap in scholarship that has emphasized biographical and feminist readings while neglecting the artists' political worldliness and decolonial sensibilities. Framed by the shared historical contexts of WWI–WWII, imperial interventions, and patriarchal structures in Iran and Mexico, the article asks how these works articulate critiques of coloniality, environmental devastation from nuclear/chemical warfare, and the social-medical aftermaths (e.g., leprosy) as post/colonial phenomena. It also emphasizes the intersectional feminist resistance expressed through their artistic media.

The article situates its comparative reading within decolonial thought and comparative literature. It mobilizes Walter Mignolo's critique of comparison as a colonial tool and the Colonial Matrix of Power; Aníbal Quijano's concepts of coloniality of power and race/labor hierarchies; Edward Said's Orientalism; and theories of hybridity and the Third Space (Bhabha) and borderlands/mestiza consciousness (Anzaldúa). It also references postcolonial key concepts (Ashcroft et al.). In feminist terms, it invokes decolonial feminism's critique of Western feminist universals and binary oppositions. Within Farrokhzad/Kahlo scholarship, the author notes that few studies take post-/decolonial perspectives, citing one comparative piece focused narrowly on death (Yaghoubpour & Shams), and highlights underexplored political dimensions of both artists' oeuvres.

An interdisciplinary, comparative, decolonial reading that integrates: (1) close textual analysis of Farrokhzad's poem "Terrestrial Verses" and formal analysis of her documentary The House is Black; (2) art-historical/iconographic analysis of Kahlo's Self-Portrait on the Borderline Between Mexico and the United States; (3) historical contextualization drawing on medical history and public health records concerning leprosy in Iran (Qajar to Pahlavi periods), WWI/WWII geopolitics, and industrial/chemical warfare histories; and (4) theoretical framing from decolonial studies and decolonial feminism to locate the works within the Colonial Matrix of Power rather than conventional similarity/difference comparisons. The study synthesizes published historical sources (e.g., WHO facts, colonial-era observers, archival images of chemical plants, accounts of famine and troop movements) and secondary scholarship to argue interpretively for decolonial readings across media.

• Farrokhzad’s "Terrestrial Verses" articulates a decolonial critique by depicting environmental devastation and human suffering as outcomes of nuclear and chemical warfare and wartime violence, linking local Iranian conditions to global imperial conflicts.
• The House is Black and "Terrestrial Verses" together frame leprosy in Iran as a postcolonial disease: the epidemic surge in the 1930s–40s is read as an unintended consequence of WWI-era occupations, famine, and social dislocation—elements of the colonial matrix of power.
• Historical evidence supporting the postcolonial framing of leprosy includes: (a) British troops in Iran arriving via India, where an estimated 120,000 leprosy cases existed in 1881 and 73 leper asylums in British-ruled areas (rising to 94 by 1921); (b) Russian troops entering via Azerbaijan after documented leprosy threats in 49 Russian districts (1900–1901); (c) the incubation period of leprosy (often up to 20 years) aligning with Iran’s epidemic patterns emerging in the 1940s following WWI and famine; (d) establishment of leper colonies in Iran by 1920–1921 (Azerbaijan, Khorasan, Kermanshah) indicating rising caseloads.
• The Great Persian Famine (1917–1919), linked to Russian and British occupation, created conditions—malnutrition, poor hygiene, displacement—conducive to the spread of leprosy, supporting the postcolonial disease thesis.
• Close readings of "Terrestrial Verses" align its imagery with post-WWII nuclear aftermaths: barren land and dead animals; radiation-linked congenital abnormalities (echoing Nagasaki findings on microcephaly); critique of media inversion of truth; and references to wartime sexual violence.
• Kahlo’s Borderline self-portrait visually stages a decolonial feminist critique: symmetrical composition contrasting vital indigenous Mexico with industrialized U.S.; the incursion of U.S. industry/chemicals (Ford plant, condenser steam stills/mixing pits akin to Edgewood Arsenal; blower/fan imagery) into Mexican space; and indigenous symbols (Sun/Moon, Aztec artifacts) signifying resistance and mestiza identity.
• The painting embeds contemporaneous labor politics (Ford Hunger March, 1932), reflecting Kahlo’s Marxist affiliations; Farrokhzad’s reported Marxist sympathies similarly inform her postcolonial turn.
• Both artists construct hybrid, borderland identities and deploy their bodies/voices as sites of resistance to coloniality, patriarchy, and environmental/biopolitical violence.

By relocating Farrokhzad’s poem and film and Kahlo’s painting within the Colonial Matrix of Power, the study addresses the initial question of how their works express decolonial aesthetics across media. The historical-medical argument reframes Iranian leprosy not as a purely local phenomenon but as a postcolonial outcome of wartime occupation and famine, thereby expanding readings of The House is Black and "Terrestrial Verses" beyond biographical or national frames. The comparative analysis underscores shared decolonial feminist strategies: centering marginalized bodies (lepers, women, workers), critiquing industrial-capitalist militarism and media, and visualizing hybrid identities at literal and conceptual borders. This illuminates how artistic form (poetry/film/painting) mediates political critique in contexts where direct dissent was constrained, and links Latin American and Iranian cultural production in a transregional decolonial discourse.

Kahlo and Farrokhzad, shaped by experiences across colonizer/colonized spaces, world wars, and leftist politics, developed artistic practices that foreground decolonial critique and feminist resistance. The article highlights overlooked political dimensions in their works: Farrokhzad’s rendering of leprosy and environmental catastrophe as postcolonial effects, and Kahlo’s borderland imagery opposing U.S. neo-imperialism and industrial violence. Drawing on cultural heritage and indigenous symbols, both artists contest nationalism/colonialism as intertwined and advocate broader human and environmental rights. The comparative decolonial reading forges a new linkage between Latin America and Asia, suggesting future research into transregional decolonial aesthetics across additional media, contexts, and health-environment intersections.