FRIDA KAHLO AT THE TATE
A few hours spent wandering around the Frida Kahlo exhibition with a mate at Tate Modern on Saturday, and I'm still thinking about it.
What I loved most wasn't just seeing her paintings in real life, it was seeing them in conversation.
The exhibition places Kahlo's work alongside artists she inspired and within her artistic circles, making it impossible to separate her from the generations of LATAM, Chicano/a, feminist, disabled and queer artists who found permission in her honesty. Opposite the Tracy Emin show (which I’ve seen twice) it felt incredibly connected. Her influence doesn't feel historical. It feels alive, still rippling outward through contemporary culture. The hanging of the show has divided some critics, who wanted a more of her work and a traditional retrospective, but I found it one of the show's greatest strengths.
So much of the Frida we think we know from popular culture comes from those unwavering self-portraits. Fierce, defiant and direct. But the candid photographs scattered through the exhibition reveal someone else too. Relaxed. Playful. Joyful. With friends, or in pain as she paints on her back. A fuller person, not just an icon. Somehow that made the paintings even more powerful, because you could feel the deliberate construction of the self she chose to show the world.
It left me thinking about how every generation creates the artists it needs. Sometimes we inherit their work. Sometimes we inherit their courage.
The paintings are extraordinary. But perhaps her greatest masterpiece was creating a version of herself that could carry so many other people forward.
