At the end, I forgot some of the works. And I still remember Frida.
I went to see Frida at Tate Modern a few weeks ago and I needed some time to process it.
As you know, I don't write about every exhibition now. When I write, it's because of research, or because something has moved me, for better or worse. This one moved me and not entirely in the direction I expected.
I love Frida. Her work has been with me since I was very young: the aesthetic with the surreal touches, the way she painted (we are talking about disabled art), the way she cut herself open and showed you everything, how the work was politically charged in every way, from directly political to the Chicano movement back then. As a woman, as a maker, she was one of my first references. She became an icon for me, and the show is called "The Making of an Icon", so I understand why she's an icon for so many others too.
But I didn't like the exhibition much. I know it isn't a retrospective; she had one at the V&A some years ago, before the Instagram fever, and I still remember it. This one at Tate felt heavy to digest, for a few reasons.
The first is the framing itself. It's called "The Making of an Icon." But I didn't see the making. I saw: she's already an icon, so let's keep selling her as one, a money-making exhibition where people will pay anyway because they'll get to see Frida's original work. And to be honest, Frida would be mad about this.
I went for free, but the rooms were packed. I don't know why they offer timed slots if it still feels like a mass. And most of the people there weren't going for free, they paid full price, no concessions.
The second is that it made me think about how museums make an icon. I wrote an essay during my MA on exactly this, how museums turn a work into an icon: positioning it at a strategic point in the route, using it as the main visual across all the marketing, repeating the same narrative in labels and audio guides, etc. This exhibition is a case study of that mechanism.
And when you place your own work, inspired by Frida, next to Frida herself, that's a milestone, but it can also overshadow you, because Frida is pretty iconic and museums know how to make a work iconic too.
The third is the interpretation. I appreciate short and sweet wall texts and labels, and they were. But sometimes I wanted more, and then the information jumped. At first I thought we were going chronologically, then suddenly we were on themes. Three rooms and I was tired and confused.
The fourth, and the one that stayed with me, was a hidden corner about abortion. A tiny corner, hiding the work. Frida didn't hide it, so why do we in the 21st century? There's amazing work there by Judy Chicago, Carrie Mae Weems and others. It's in a corner with a "sensitive content" sign. Yes, it might be sensitive for some people but why hide it? And honestly, not all the works in that corner feel directly inspired by Frida; the theme is something more generic.
The museum's own content guidance lists "references to sexual violence and miscarriage" alongside "images of dead bodies" as if reproductive loss belongs in the same category as corpses. That framing says more about the institution than the work.
The last room felt like too much: every possible piece of Frida merch, and then a bit more, and you open the door and go straight into the shop. So I didn't really understand how she became an icon, because for everyone that can happen in different ways.
Taken together, the exhibition feels like when you eat too much, again and again the same thing. And yet there was one thing that worked. A nice recreation of "Homenaje a Frida Kahlo", the 1978 Day of the Dead exhibition at Galería de la Raza in San Francisco. It was one of the first exhibitions to honour Frida as an ancestor, with a collective altar at its centre. Chicano artists claimed her before the mainstream did. That part was lovely.
Because that, for me, is the real story of how an icon is made, not by a museum repeating her face on tote bags, but by communities who find something of themselves in her.
At the end, I forgot some of the works. And I still remember Frida.
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