MY GRANDPARENTS, MY PARENTS, AND I
FRIDA KAHLO, 1936
Stand close. This one's tiny. Four generations of Kahlo's family, painted onto a sheet of zinc about the size of a large book. It's a family tree. Just not the official kind. Down in the courtyard of her childhood home stands a naked little Frida, already unmistakably her, staring straight out at you. In her hand, a red ribbon. And it branches. It runs up to her parents, copied from their actual wedding photograph. Stiff, posed, dropped into this much stranger, more private picture. Then it reaches out to the grandparents in the sky. Her father's family floats over the ocean. He was born in Germany and crossed that water to Mexico. Her mother's family rises over the Mexican landscape. Two sides of her, hanging over her head. And she doesn't stop at faces. Near her mother, there's a tiny fetus. Below that, an egg, with sperm swimming toward it. She painted her own conception. The whole chain of how she got here, two families meeting, all the way down to the kid in the courtyard holding the ribbon. And the year matters. It's 1936. In Germany, the Nazis are ranking people by blood, using family trees to decide who counts and who doesn't. It's hard not to see Kahlo's painting as an answer to that. Her family tree proves nothing is pure. Germany and Mexico. Europe and the Americas. Different histories, different kinds of blood, all leading to her. So it's a family tree and a self-portrait at the same time. Really, it's a map of the strangest thing there is. One particular person coming into existence. The ribbon runs back through everyone it took to make her. And it ends right here, in her hand.