PARIS – A new exhibition in Paris offers a glimpse into Frida Kahlo’s private life, juxtaposing the Mexican artist’s paintings with personal effects ranging from her traditional Tehuana clothing to her orthopedic corset and even her pink lipstick. lit Revlon.
“Frida Kahlo, Beyond Appearances” opens Thursday at the Palais Galliera, the Paris City Hall-backed fashion museum, after making its debut in 2012 as Casa Azul, Kahlo’s hometown in Mexico City and stops in London, New York City. and San Francisco in various iterations.
The show, which runs until March 5, features more than 200 objects from the Museo Frida Kahlo, including clothing, accessories, papers, cosmetics, medicine and orthopedic aids, including a prosthetic leg with a red leather boot that she started to wear after her. her right leg was amputated a year before her death.
“This exhibit here discusses her construction of identity through her disability, her ethnicity, her gender identity, and her political views,” said Circe Henestrosa, exhibit curator and designer and head of the fashion school at Lasalle College of the Arts in Singapore.
Many of the objects were sealed after Kahlo’s death in 1954 and only saw the light of day half a century later. Miraculously, many of her clothes survived intact and are displayed alongside the photographs in which they appear, including a famous series of color portraits by Nickolas Muray.
“As I was looking at her clothing, I was looking at photography and painting to understand her style and how she was handling these materials,” said Henestrosa, whose great-aunts supplied Kahlo with some of the traditional clothing from the region. of Oaxaca. favored.
“I immediately saw how all these materials connected and spoke to each other. There is no hierarchy in curatorial decisions, so clothing is as important as painting, painting is as important as photography, photography is as important as orthopedic tools,” she continued. “It’s not an art show, it’s a show that shows all the creative processes together in one big narrative.”
The exhibit in the museum’s basement galleries begins with a large documentary section tracing Kahlo’s formative years, including the traumatic events that shaped her as an artist: she contracted polio at age six, leaving her with one leg shorter than the other, and at 18 survived a horrific tram accident that left multiple injuries requiring lifelong medical treatment.
But equally important was the influence of her parents. From her mother Matilde Calderón y González, who was of Spanish and indigenous descent, she drew her affinity for traditional Mexican clothing, while her German-born father Guillermo Kahlo taught her the power of the image.
“Her first form of self-expression was a striking pose in front of her father, who was a photographer, and we notice how after polio, she becomes introverted,” said Gannit Ankori, a professor of art history and theory. specializing in Frida Kahlo. and who acted as a content advisor to the exhibit. “After that, she has that serious, intense look that you see later in her self-portraits.”
After her accident, Kahlo, who was studying medicine at the time, began to paint. One of her drawings from that period shows the scene of the crash in vivid detail, with Kahlo thrown into the debris, and also hovering above observing the event.
“What she shows here is another Frida, a second self, on the outside, and it’s like the psychological phenomenon of separation or detachment, when something so terrible happens to you, you detach your head from your body,” he said. The anchor.
“It’s a recurring motif throughout her life, where she shows two Fridas, or a double self,” she noted.
Photographs taken the following year show Kahlo dressed alternately in a three-piece men’s suit and a knee-length black satin dress. “You see that she chooses how to present herself, she poses to represent different aspects of her identity, and she’s highlighting a gender fluidity before that term existed,” Ankori said.
After marrying Mexican muralist Diego Rivera in 1929, Kahlo grew into her persona. She adopted traditional clothing as a statement of her Mexican identity, but also as a way to deal more comfortably with her disability.
“The geometry of the composition of the Tehuana dress allows her to edit herself, because all the embellishment is centered from the torso,” Henestrosa noted. “Under those beautiful fabrics she will hide her body, but then she will reveal it bluntly, through her art.”
When Kahlo and Rivera arrived in the US in 1930, she wowed photographers like Peter Juley and Imogen Cunningham with her style. “The attitude towards her was quite patronising, but she was also fascinating,” Ankori said. Film footage from the period shows her climbing down scaffolding while Rivera works and works on her drawings.
A section created for the Paris exhibition focuses on her trip to the French capital in 1939, where she participated in a group show called “Mexique” organized by surrealist poet André Breton. Letters and photographs show that even though she was going through a crisis in her marriage to Rivera, Kahlo developed close friendships while in France.
This piece includes never-before-seen items such as her passport, address book and ticket for the Normandy cruise. But the highlight of the exhibition is the display of Kahlo’s personal effects, including a necklace she made from pre-Columbian jade beads; a bottle of Chanel No.5 lotion, and several Revlon makeup items, including a tube of Everyone’s Rosy lipstick.
“When I went through her personal belongings, I met her for the first time and found someone who was incredibly sophisticated,” Henestrosa said.
One wall displays Kahlo’s collection of orthopedic corsets, including some she decorated by hand. In a photograph by Florence Arquin, she proudly lifts her huipil blouse to reveal a plaster body with a hammer and sickle painted on her chest and an unborn baby drawn to her belly.
“For me, it’s very important to emphasize that it was through creativity that she dealt with her disabilities, that she didn’t allow herself to be defined by these disabilities, but that she defined who she was on her own terms,” Henestrosa explained. “It’s so beautiful how these corsets become an extension of her body and pieces of art in their own right.”
On the first floor of the museum, a capsule exhibition running from Thursday to December 31 examines Kahlo’s influence on contemporary designers including Rei Kawakubo for Comme des Garçons, Jean Paul Gaultier, Riccardo Tisci for Givenchy, Maria Grazia Chiuri for Dior and Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel.
The French fashion house, which is supporting the exhibition on an exclusive basis, noted that Kahlo inspired Lagerfeld for his spring 1993 ready-to-wear campaign and an editorial for German Vogue in March 2010, both of which featured Claudia Schiffer. . Displayed in a slide show at the entrance to the exhibition, the images are sure to spark debate.
“It’s an interpretation. It’s going to be controversial for some people because she’s a white model and it’s kind of a waste,” said Henestrosa. “But the materials exist. The materials are there to be interpreted by the public.”
Known for her wicked sense of humor, Kahlo might have been amused by the idea of a German haute couture fashioned in her likeness, if only because it illustrates the staying power of the myth she created.
