FRIDA KAHLO: Making Her Self Up
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hen the iconic artist Frida Kahlo died in 1954, age 47, her husband, muralist Diego Riviera, did something for which we can all be grateful – he locked away many of her belongings in their Blue House on the outskirts of Mexico City for posterity. Discovered in 2004, more than 200 of these intimate items now form the V&A’s major summer exhibition: Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up. For the first time ever, this show pairs Kahlo’s dresses with her paintings to explore how the artist carefully shaped her distinctive identity through art, clothes and makeup after two major life events: her contraction of polio at the age of six, which left her disabled, and a near-fatal bus crash at 18, after which she was incapacitated for long periods. Co-curated by Circe Henestrosa, head of the School of Fashion, LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore, and Claire Wilcox, the V&A’s senior curator of fashion, the retrospective features 22 of Kahlo’s signature Tehuana dresses,
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05/08/2018 16:20