I loved the Frida Kahlo exhibition at the Tate. I have had friends gripe that the exhibition is lacking some of her most famous paintings, which is true, but then it also has some smaller, lesser seen works. Besides, the clue is in the title FRIDA: THE MAKING OF AN ICON, and this the exhibition does superbly. We see her clothes, her jewellery, films of her in her house, how she was painted by her contemporaries, most famously by her husband, Diego Rivera. How and why she was taken up by pop cultures globally. The exhibition ends with these huge glass cases showing the hundreds of books written on her in the past few decades, dolls, merchandising, the posters of films about her. Her connection to liberation struggles, Marxism, Surrealism, feminism, queer cultures, indigenous cultures, Mexicanidad and its connections to broader Latin American cultures etc. It’s a great exhibition. Her painting is central but not the main focus of the exhibition; and how she became an icon and why she remains one is well illustrated and fascinating.

Others have argued that it doesn’t have a main narrative thread, which I also don’t agree with. The exhibition is  chronological from ‘construction/ self-construction, the first room, to the Fridamania of the last room. In between we see how the one led to the other though works ‘On the Other Side of the Border’, Neo-Mecicanisms, A Pro-Activist Legacy, etc. Some were bothered by the recurrent mention of ‘gender fluidity,’ finding it too obvious.  There’s clearly needed by some people; and also ‘Gendered dialogues’ on her iconicity is a running thread through the exhibition. I would also have liked to have seen more of her most famous works but still appreciated how the exhibition accomplished its own goals. And brilliantly so.

José Arroyo