Frida Kahlo – Revelation in self portraits

Extreme pain never left Frida's side, and flowed into her greatest paintings over and over. Crushed by polio as a child, she learned to wear long Mexican skirts to hide her limp and wasted leg. Barely surviving an accident with multiple fractures, she put herself together with leather braces and plaster casts. With an easel constructed so she could paint in bed, and regular morphine injected into her veins, painting became her singular outlet and form of expression. The exaggerated attention to her face with Mexican 'Maria' braids, flowers and jewellery was perhaps to take the attention away from her broken body.

Although she rejected her Catholic roots, influences resurface in her art, more so in times of heightened pain. Frida's self portraits (a third of her entire body of work) were her way of holding a mirror to heartbreak, betrayal and suffering. Sometimes she is redeemed by her pet monkey Chango, and sometimes she bleeds out with no one to save her, like in her legendary painting 'Las Dos Fridas' (The Two Fridas).

Diego Rivera, the great muralist, is revered in Mexico. His work holds up the struggles of his people, their humiliation at the hands of the Spanish and the 'Gringos', the loss and poverty inflicted on them. Next to him, Frida seems to fade in the Mexican mind, her themes of expression much more personal, smaller. In my time spent in Mexico, I absorbed this bias too, realising only later how indelible she is for her work, story and contribution to changing the narrative of women in art.

Here is my tribute to this incredible woman, bringing her a bit closer to home. In an heirloom Kanjivaram from my mother in law, a Mashru blouse from Ahmedabad, turquoise beads from Ladakh. And this bidi that stands for all of us in India 😁