In the manner of Frida Kahlo
Mexican, 1907–1954
The Two Fridas, Front Camera, 2026
Oil on masonite
50 × 40 cm
Never painted.
Commissioned for the collection, 2026.
PAB 2026.21.2
← Self-Portrait with Insulin Pump Self-Portrait with Rescue Dog →
Two seated women with shaved heads and round glasses, identical, barefoot, in the same white blouse and red skirt. The one on the right is the same woman on a phone screen, and a red charging cable runs from one to the other where Kahlo's *Two Fridas* share an artery. Parrots and a monkey watch from the leaves. It is a portrait of a person and her profile.
The brief
Two seated versions of the same woman with a shaved head and round glasses, an invented person who resembles no real painter, holding hands, one seen directly and one as she appears on a phone screen, connected by a thin red charging cable. Mid-century Mexican folk-modernist oil painting, a frontal figure with an unflinching direct gaze against dense tropical foliage, flat saturated greens, reds and golds, small symbolic animals and objects, naive precise detail, a votive ex-voto stillness, matte paint on board. Museum photograph of the oil painting on board, flat even lighting, no frame, no text, no wall, no floor, cropped to the canvas edge.
Written to the house rules. The painter's name does not appear.
Take it home
The painting on this room's wall, at its own proportions, nothing written on it.
