Frida Kahlo’s self portraits are known all over the world.
The infamous brow, the bright colours, the deep stare.
Married to fellow artist Diego Rivera, Frida once said: “I was born a bitch. I was born a painter.” But Kahlo’s personal possessions – including a heavily decorated prosthetic leg she made herself after her lower right limb was amputated in 1952 – have remained largely unseen.
In 1954, following the death of his famous wife, Rivera locked her possessions in a room Inside the walls of the pair's famous blue house in Mexico City,and asked that it be opened 15 years after his death.
Three years later, in 1957, Diego died. And the room with Frida's possessions in it, including her wooden leg, her paint brushes and some of her favourite clothes, was kept locked. It remained that way for 47 years.
Photographer Ishiuchi Miyako entered house in 2004 to photograph the unseen collection of the painter's possessions.
Miyako released the book Frida in 2013 containing the images, and now the photographs are being shown in the Michael Hoppen Gallery in London for the next month.
Describing the exhibition the gallery said:
Ishiuchi Miyako’s images document the traditional Tehuana dresses that both concealed the damage to her lower body and acted as a feminist salute to the matriarchal society from which they are derived. * Through her photographs Ishiuchi came to recognise the parallel between these traditional garments and the kimonos of her own country, an “ephipany” that is evident in the images themselves. Throughout the photographs there is a particular awareness, a tenderness that is inherent to a woman looking through another woman’s intimate possessions. As she painstakingly catalogues the chic of Kahlo’s sunglasses, the intimacy of her darned tights and the corsets that were to be the armature by which she survived.
Take a look through some of the photos:
See more of the collection here.
