EL MUSEO FRIDA

Having only thirty-six hours in Mexico City, I decided the one thing I had to see what Frida Kahlo's old house, which has now been converted into a museum, el Museo Frida.


The thing that impressed me the most was that I have never seen a space that so directly reflected the presence of the people who had lived there. On nearly every bedroom wall, she had painted a list of the names of people who had stayed in that room; in the kitchen, she'd taken hundreds of small, thimbled-sized teacups and arranged them on the wall to spell out 'Frida' and 'Diego' (the name of her husband, also a famous artist.) Even in her courtyard, there's a classic mosaic which says "Frida and Diego were here." (above)



But it wasn't only the fact that their names where all over the place, they'd written notes in pencil on the plaster walls; they had friend's artwork and family portraits all over the place. And, knowing that Frida was unable to have children because of a traumatic trolley accident, when you see a 4'x6' diagram of the various embryonic stages of pregnancy hanging right beside her easel in her studio, it's really moving.