by P Abigail Sadhana Rao
Few artists have lived as intensely in both pain and passion as Frida Kahlo. Her life was a tapestry woven from suffering and defiance, resilience and reinvention. From childhood, she bore the weight of illness, first with polio that left her with a lifelong limp, and later with the catastrophic bus accident that shattered her spine and pelvis at just eighteen. Doctors doubted her recovery, yet she painted her way through the agony, turning confinement into creation, transforming the very walls of her room into a sanctuary of colour and defiance.
Her canvases became more than pictures; they were mirrors of her body and soul. In works like The Broken Column, she painted herself pierced and fractured, yet unyielding, an image of vulnerability turned into testimony. Though she endured infertility, countless surgeries, and the turbulence of her marriage with Diego Rivera, she refused to be silenced. Instead, she poured her despair, her longing, and her fierce identity into her self-portraits, each one both confession and declaration.
She embodied resilience not by denying her pain, but by daring to look at it, to hold it, and to transform it into art. She wore her Mexican heritage proudly, clothing herself in traditional Tehuana dresses, flowers, and ornaments that became both armor and statement, a living canvas that defied colonial ideals and patriarchal expectations. Her very existence was protest and poetry, her voice ringing with lines like: “Why do I need feet, if I have wings to fly?”
This is why Frida Kahlo endures. She is more than a painter; she is a symbol of courage, an icon for women and marginalized communities, and a guide for anyone who has known suffering yet chooses to create in spite of it. Her legacy is one of empowerment, proof that art can be medicine, that pain can be purpose, and that identity can be both shield and song.
And today, across oceans and generations, her spirit finds new life in India. Come with me on this journey as we witness Frida reimagined by Indian artists on Mojarto, each interpretation a love letter, a dialogue across cultures, a new way of keeping her legacy alive.
Frida with Wings
Look at her seated under a tree, serene yet commanding, angelic wings stretching outward as if preparing to lift her beyond earthly struggle. In her lap rests a toy monkey, playful and innocent, a counterpoint to the depth in her gaze.
This is Himanshu Lodwal’s painting portrays Frida as quiet yet powerful, vulnerable yet transcendent. Lodwal, a freelance artist from Madhya Pradesh, paints with a figurative style that never traps itself in rigid meaning. Instead, it allows the viewer to enter the painting and dream alongside her. His Frida is the very embodiment of grace tethered to the earth yet forever longing for the sky.
Frida in Patachitra
Step into Bengal, and you find Frida reborn in the luminous strokes of patachitra, the scroll tradition carried by generations of storytellers. Swarna Chitrakar, a state awardee and torchbearer of this art form, brings Frida into her own cultural universe.
This reinterpretation resonates with Kahlo’s celebrated Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (1940). The symbolism there was heavy with pain, sacrifice, and mortality. Here, she stands adorned with vibrant foliage, surrounded by symbolic creatures and the ornate rhythm of folk lines. It is not just a painting; it is a marriage of Mexico’s surrealism and Bengal’s folk storytelling. In Swarna’s vision, Frida’s resilience takes on new colours, proving once again that she transcends borders; she is as much at home in Midnapore as in Mexico City.
Queen Frida
Alka Choudhary dreams her art into being. Her “dreaming lady” series is famed for its elongated eyes — eyes that seem to carry the entire weight of human experience, lakes deep enough to drown in.
In Queen Frida, Alka lets her muse wear her crown proudly. Flamingos bow at her side, florals burst into flame around her, and a jewel of self-reflection rests upon her neck. Her Frida is regal yet tender, a queen not of nations but of hearts. This work is no lament but a celebration, a festival of colour and devotion, a declaration of eternal admiration for the woman who turned her wounds into wings and continues to reign as an icon of endurance and imagination.
Frida in Heaven
Imagine Frida painting herself in the afterlife. That is what Vijay Kale dares to do. His Frida in Heaven shows her not as a mortal bound by pain but as a luminous being in another realm. She holds her own heart delicately, as if both grieving and cherishing it, while an apple and celestial orb float in her hands like emblems of life and eternity.
Here, she is free of physical agony, yet the memories remain, because Frida was never about forgetting pain, but transforming it into beauty. Kale’s vision is haunting, contemplative, and reverent, imagining a Frida who continues to create even in heaven.
The Wounded Deer Reborn
Who could forget Frida Kahlo’s unforgettable self-portrait The Wounded Deer (1946)? A deer pierced with arrows, her own face calm and unyielding, standing motionless in a dark forest of fate. It is one of her most haunting works, a vision of suffering made strangely serene, where pain and endurance exist in the same still frame.
Bhaskar Chitrakar, a contemporary Kalighat patua, breathes new life into this image. His deer bleeds but moves forward with defiance, determination, and grace. Painted in powder pigments on handmade paper, his work fuses the flat ornamental beauty of the Kalighat style with the raw honesty of Kahlo’s original. What was once a tragic stillness becomes resilience in motion. His Frida is not resigned, she is surviving, striding, endlessly strong.
Eternal Frida: The Unbroken
These Indian reimaginings remind us that Frida Kahlo is not a memory but a living presence. Each artist carries her beyond borders, showing how her defiance and tenderness continue to inspire. She does not belong only to Mexico or her century, she belongs to all who transform suffering into strength, to all who seek beauty in both fragility and fire.
Through these works, she rises again: winged, crowned, scarred, and transcendent. She will not fade — she refuses, she rebels, she endures. Frida lives where pain becomes power and wounds become wings.