Milan, October 13 (askanews) – There is one face that, more than any other, has transcended the twentieth century to become a universal icon: that of Frida Kahlo. The exhibition "Through My Eyes: Frida Kahlo and the Construction of the Myth" retraces this journey through 75 shots by 11 international photographers, as curator Vittoria Mainoldi explains.
Frida Kahlo has certainly been overexposed in recent years, especially considering she wasn't famous when she died. Her rediscovery occurred around the end of the 1980s, but now Frida is everywhere—on diaries, handbags, mugs, you name it. We have a true icon. An icon also in the etymological sense of the term, meaning a two-dimensional object often devoid of meaning.
This exhibition seeks to restore a little three-dimensionality and does so by showing 11 different Frida Kahlos. And I made it towards photography because Frida Kahlo, despite being a painter, a painter who used the arch, the self-portrait, was also an artist who was fully aware of the power of photography. Frida's relationship with photography was also close because her father Guillermo was a professional photographer. "Frida, however, did not photograph, but she was photographed a lot.
Upon her death, we found over 6000 photographic prints, many of them portraits of Frida Kahlo, taken by many different photographers. We have selected just 11 of them. The exhibition, open until January 11, 2027, at MYOWNGALLERY – Superstudio Più in Milan, is above all a reflection on identity, self-representation, and the construction of myth.
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