How Tate Modern is serving up Frida Kahlo – from canvas to cuisine
The forthcoming Tate Modern retrospective, Frida: The Making of an Icon, promises to go beyond the canvas to explore the construction of an artistic legend. At a recent breakfast press-briefing at KOL, a Mexican restaurant in London, co-curator Tobias Ostrander framed the exhibition as a study in how Frida Kahlo “constructed her own image and identity through her artwork and her appearance”.
The show, which arrives at Tate Modern this June following a debut at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), invites visitors to peel back the layers of a mononymic (known by just one name) myth on par with Elvis. But as Kahlo’s face becomes increasingly synonymous with consumer goods, a question remains: if we continue to “eat her up”, will any of her radical substance be left?
Since Kahlo’s death in 1954, the curators noted, the artist has come to serve the feminist and gay rights movements as a “symbol of radical criticality and self-invention”. Her refusal to adhere to traditional gender norms either in her presentation or sexual conduct, and her carefully crafted adoption of traditional Tehuana clothing (through her mother’s heritage) are just part of the appeal.
Her path-breaking adoption of a confessional mode in art, sharing her biographical and biological trauma as the central subject of her work, seems to presage the way identity is performed on social media today. If her purpose is to serve as a signifier of active agency, then Kahlo’s time has come.
As a public icon, Kahlo is a strangely open symbol. Some of the uses to which her image has been put are incompatible with what we know of her convictions. Despite being a lifelong (if intermittent) communist, Kahlo is a hugely ubiquitous brand. Alongside 80 of her works, the Tate retrospective will feature an unconventional display of licensed “merch”, from shoes and bags, to tequila and sanitary pads. The latter is bitterly ironic, given Kahlo’s own struggles with reproductive health.
The MFAH gift shop offers visitors the opportunity to “shop the collection”, with a pick of Kahlo planters, Kahlo “secular candles”, tote bags and more. The most memorable item is a strikingly weird “Two Fridas” fridge magnet. This transforms one of the artist’s most visceral paintings into a kitschy bit of kitchen bling. This is the challenge of the Kahlo legacy: the more ubiquitous her image becomes, the more its original and liberating meaning risks being flattened.
A tale of two kitchens
The exhibition’s parallel gastronomic tie-ins offer a useful way of considering the tension between the particular and the spectacular. Le Jardinier, the MFAH’s restaurant, makes a practice of creating “Culinary Canvas” desserts to honour the artists that the gallery shows. For Kahlo, they created In Bloom, “a vibrant reflection of the flowers in Mexican culture and Kahlo’s artwork … layered with guava cream, pineapple compote and hibiscus gelée.” It looks the picture.
In contrast, Tate Eat’s partnership with Santiago Lastra, the Michelin-starred founder of KOL, suggests a more grounded approach to cultural translation. Like Kahlo, Lastra is a proud Mexican, but rather than relying on imported ingredients, his method is to reinterpret from the British terroir.
The flavour of lime is recreated by the tart British berry sea buckthorn. Floral mango is reimagined through tempered butternut squash. This research-intensive translation liberates his cuisine from poor quality air-freighted produce, and, arguably, gets the British diner closer to a true Mexican experience.
I had the opportunity to enjoy Lastra’s food, after which I asked him about the common points between his cooking and Kahlo’s art. He replied that his involvement was about “showcasing Mexican culture in the UK – I think Frida, well, taking your roots somewhere else really tests them, putting them into a global city is where it is tested, and that’s how you know it’s good”. He went on to say that his mission is to share “the high quality of Mexico in terms of craft”.
Creative translation, like Kahlo’s adoption of indigenous clothing, or Lastra’s cooking, is the key to maintaining a creative legacy.
There are more than 100 artworks by artists who have been inspired by Kahlo coming to the Tate this June. Among them is Mary McCartney’s portrait of Tracy Emin as Frida Kahlo. Emin’s practice explores personal trauma and defiant survival, like Kahlo’s, and it is both fitting and disarming to be confronted by this combination of the two personae.
This is where Kahlo’s legacy finds its breath. Just as Lastra translates the tart snap of a Mexican lime into a British berry, artists like Emin translate Kahlo’s radical essence into a modern context. Without this kind of reimagination, an artist’s legacy loses its relevance. It becomes less magnetic and more of a magnet, stuck to a fridge.
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Benedict Carpenter van Barthold does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.