Frida Kahlo’s Self-Portrait on the Border: pretty in pink and championing Mexico

Kahlo’s shock at an industrialised and over-populated America compared with the deep-rooted culture of her homeland

Pink eye …

Frida Kahlo plays with the pretty in pink stereotype in one of her more directly political paintings (its full title is Self-Portrait on the Border Between Mexico and the United States of America). Far from the demure figure of soirees that her outfit suggests, she stands, fag in hand, tense, with her lips pursed.

Smoke and mirrors …

It was created in 1932 when she was living in the US. America, on the right, is an inhuman, inorganic place of Fordian industry. Factory vents resemble faceless, cowled figures. Instead of plant roots, electric cables snake through the soil.

Blast from the past …

Mexico, on the other hand, is shown as a place connected to history, rich with cycles of life and death. The ancient temple might be ruined but it still casts a shadow on the present. There are fertility figures and a death’s head.

Big country …

It is a manifesto of a work, setting out Kahlo’s Mexicanidad ideas, championing her country’s agrarian culture and history over a United States disconnected from nature and the past.

Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up, Victoria & Albert Museum, SW7, to 4 November

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