Frida Kahlo’s Bathroom

9 FEBRUARY TO 8 APRIL

INSTITUTO CERVANTES

When the iconic Mexican artist Frida Kahlo died, her husband locked her most private possessions inside her bathroom. After five decades, in 2004, the room was finally reopened. One year later, the Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide visited Kahlo’s home and captured stark, black-and-white shots of scenes inside it, with a special focus on the mysterious bathroom. Iturbide has said that she aimed to document “everything related with Frida’s pain”—an approach that showcased a dramatically different side of Kahlo than the one projected in the painter’s own art, which features vivid hues and fantastical images.

The theme of containment echoes ominously through many of Iturbide’s pictures, from an image of Kahlo’s crutches and back brace resting against a wall, to one of hulking trees that appear to bar her house. One eerie photograph shows a hospital gown splattered with red liquid that appears to be blood—although a caption below clarifies that it is actually red paint from a time Kahlo painted while sick in the hospital. Iturbide even reinterprets Kahlo’s famous painting “What the Water Gave Me.” While the original work is almost hallucinatory, depicting two handsome feet resting in a bathtub teeming with grand figures, Iturbide’s version is simple and hyper-realistic, showing gnarled feet on an empty tub.

~ Samira Bose

An earlier version of this review misspelt the artist Frida Kahlo's name. This has now been corrected. The Caravan regrets the error.