‘A ribbon around a bomb’ was how André Breton, the founder of Surrealism, described the deeply contrasting art of Frida Kahlo during his 1938 jaunt to Mexico. At once seductive and cataclysmic – ribbon and bomb – the painter’s oeuvre is defined by this duality. Her explosive meditations on bodily trauma and political dissent come wrapped in a magical aesthetic... the proverbial bow.
Nowhere is this dichotomy so evident as in Self-Portrait (Dedicated to Jacqueline Lamba), currently on display at Tate Modern. At first glimpse the steel butterfly frame, with its portrait cocooned within, appears charming and decorative – almost trinket-like. To me, it recalls the sentimental aesthetics of girlhood: a cut-out picture of a best friend, a treasured keepsake, or even a curio plucked from the Sofia Coppola archive of unruly, intimate bedroomscapes.
In this vein, the work’s dedication to a fellow female artist and close friend feels fitting; timeless even. Like many of Kahlo’s self-portraits, which often function as visual letters, this piece draws on a lexicon of female friendship and sororal love. Intimate in scale, it’s a ‘forget me not’ of sorts – a token of remembrance for Lamba as she returned home to Paris, following her time among the artists and intellectuals who mingled inside the cobalt walls of Kahlo’s home, Casa Azul. Their kinship is also palpable in the object’s material form. The steel frame, which borrows from the Mexican folk tradition of milagros, is intended as a talisman, bringing protection or good luck to its holder.
Yet this sweet shell masks something more complex. The butterfly – a leitmotif that flutters across Kahlo’s artistic biosphere – is neither ornamental nor coincidental. It’s the symbolic hinge that opens a deeper, more existential, understanding of the object. Far from fragile or ephemeral, the insect suggests metamorphosis and rebirth, turning the portrait into a meditation on the body itself.
In pre-Hispanic mythology, these winged creatures were closely associated with the souls of fallen warriors – figures of strength who had passed through death and been transformed, returning as butterflies. It stands as a reminder that, through devastation, there lies a path to other forms of existence. For Kahlo, whose body was a site of much suffering, this motif must have felt particularly resonant – consoling perhaps. Throughout her life, she experienced cycles of physical trauma and reconstruction: the devastating bus accident at 18, the surgeries, chronic pain and periods of immobilisation. By inserting her image into the butterfly’s core, she becomes the warrior, reframing her story as one of courage.
Kahlo’s project is underscored by the portrait itself: she meets us with an assured, enigmatic gaze while red, vein-like branches encircle her neck. These earthly threads bind her to the natural world – where she exists beyond the body, flourishing and flowing into a state of transcendence. In keeping with Mexico’s ex-voto tradition, whereby devotional images were painted on small sheets of tin to express gratitude, oil paint has been applied directly on to the metal frame. The portrait comes, then, to resemble a sacred offering. A shrine to a transformative period in Kahlo’s life, capturing the outward confidence of an artist on the cusp of international recognition, while exposing the inner world of a woman remaking herself through love and self-possession.
‘Frida: The Making of an Icon’, runs at Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1, until 3 Jan. Visit tate.org.uk
A version of this article appears in the September 2026 issue of ‘The World of Interiors’. Learn about our subscription offers
