An Inner Dialogue with Frida Kahlo (Gift 2)

This work was part of Looking 101, a 2024 exhibition that supported Northwestern University’s undergraduate curriculum with an emphasis on first-year students.The following text was made available in the exhibition via cell phone camera (QR code) and booklet

Using makeup, costumes, painting, and sometimes digital manipulation, Morimura Yasumasa poses for photographs in which he impersonates portraits of famous individuals from art history, including Vincent van Gogh, Marilyn Monroe, and the Mona Lisa. In this case, he has taken up the identity of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. In this work he reinterprets Kahlo’s painting Self-Portrait Dedicated to Leon Trotsky —in which she alludes to her relationship with the Russian revolutionary leader. Morimura calls himself a cross between an actor and a visual artist. Of his series embodying Kahlo, he has said, "The various elements of . . . Frida and myself mix into a muddle and a chemical reaction occurs, creating this imaginary Frida of mine." His work is a performance that creates juxtapositions and ambiguity. It hovers between photography and painting, homage and mockery, and gendered categories. Kahlo’s Mexican rebozo shawl is replaced by a Louis Vuitton scarf—a luxury brand synonymous with Western capitalism. The letter to Trotsky—a communist—is missing from his version; instead, we see Morimura’s hand connecting with another backstage.