Memory, the Heart

Memory, the Heart, self-portrait created in 1937 by Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. Kahlo produced more than 55 self-portraits, all dealing with issues of identity. Memory, the Heart expresses the pain and sorrow she felt about the extramarital affair between her husband, muralist Diego Rivera, and her younger sister, Cristina.

Here she has shown herself three times. She stands in the center, in a European white dress and jacket, with cropped hair, and without arms and hands. Her face is covered in tears, and one foot is on the shore and the other in the sea. The foot in the sea is misshapen and appears to reflect recent foot surgery. Behind her a schoolgirl dress hangs from a red hanger, and her arm extends from the left sleeve. Next to her, on another red hanger, a Tehuana dress has a right arm linked with the central figure’s empty sleeve. A red thread connects the dresses to each other and to the central figure. Through a hole where the central figure’s heart should be, there is a long rod, with tiny cupids on either end, seated as though the rod were a seesaw.

Her enlarged heart lies on the shore, bleeding rivers of blood toward the mountains in the background and into the sea as well as toward her feet. The heart speaks vividly of Kahlo’s pain, while the central figure’s lack of arms expresses a sense of helplessness. Yet she is connected to both her other selves and appears to be supported by the self in the Tehuana dress.