In this blog post, I take a look at some of the current and upcoming exhibitions where you can experience the unique world of Frida Kahlo, and explore how her legacy continues to inspire and captivate audiences around the globe. There are some versions that say that Diego helped her. That…in the family is a taboo. Nobody talks about that. If your companion of all your life said, ‘I am tired, I really want to go, help me.’ Well maybe you try…”

There have been two great accidents in my life. One was the trolley and the other was Diego. Diego was by far the worst. Up north, Cairns Art Gallery is going ‘troppo’ with an exhibition by the late Peter Kingston and Euan Macleod titled Travelling North (21 January – 5 March), celebrating the unique weather patterns, landscapes and people of the tropical zone. February Andy Warhol and Keith Haring. Image: Party Honouring Claes Oldenburg For Opening of His New Exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum by Ron Galella. Similarly, Renee So’s idiosyncratic practice in ceramics and textiles is inspired by art history, museum collections and popular forms of gendered symbolism. It is distinguished by its embrace of traditional crafts, cross-cultural thinking, and an underlying sense of the comedic and persistent feminist worldview. Provenance, her first major exhibition in Australia, is presented in partnership with Monash University Museum of Art. September Sydney Contemporary 2023 at Carriageworks. Image: Supplied. After a triumphant return in 2022, Sydney Contemporary (NSW) will again be held at Carriageworks, 7-10 September.

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Kahlo’s health issues became nearly all-consuming in 1950. After being diagnosed with gangrene in her right foot, Kahlo spent nine months in the hospital and had several operations during this time. She continued to paint and support political causes despite having limited mobility. In 1953, part of Kahlo’s right leg was amputated to stop the spread of gangrene. About a week after her 47th birthday, Kahlo died on July 13, 1954, at her beloved Blue House. There has been some speculation regarding the nature of her death. It was reported to be caused by a pulmonary embolism, but there have also been stories about a possible suicide. Escape the winter in July and head to Queensland for the return of Cairns Indigenous Art Fair (CIAF), with new Artistic Director Francoise Lane at the helm. The 2023 CIAF will be centred on the theme ‘Weaving Our Future: Claiming our Sovereignty’. It will be held 13–16 July with a multidimensional program of exhibitions, markets, music, dance, fashion, craft, theatre and more. This is a loving portrayal of Kahlo, and it cheers on her rebelliousness and non-conformity so convincingly that it’s impossible not to join in. It covers all the points you might expect from a 2023 documentary about her life and work. There are queer readings of her art and conversations about women in Mexico in the early 20th century, attempting to reconcile the independence that was promised to them with the social and cultural obligations of the era. (There is a brilliant detour into the life of her friend, the photographer and activist Tina Modotti, who experienced a very contemporary-sounding humiliation in the press in 1929.) On the west coast, the Art Gallery of Western Australia presents the first major museum exhibition of Farah Al Qasimi (born 1991, Abu Dhabi) in Australia. Star Machinecomprises over 20 works from a key five-year period of the artist’s practice (2017–2021) and asks important questions around ‘what do photos do now?’ (4 February– 30 July 2023, free).

Kahlo's father, Wilhelm (also called Guillermo), was a German photographer who had immigrated to Mexico where he met and married her mother Matilde. She had two older sisters, Matilde and Adriana, and her younger sister, Cristina, was born the year after Kahlo. An art superstar, the astonishing career and dazzling legacy of Frida Kahlo has become the stuff of legend. Immersive Frida Kahlo” is joining “ Immersive Van Gogh” in the former Amoeba Music building in Hollywood — it opens to the public Thursday. The exhibition will include a selection of works by Waples-Crowe, co-curated by Artistic Director Patrice Sharkey and Dominic Guerrera (Ngarrindjeri, Kaurna), alongside a presentation of new commissions by three emerging First Nation artists based in SA and mentored by Waples-Crow. October Vincent Namatjira – Art Gallery of South Australia will have a major solo exhibition in 2023. Image: Supplied.A perennial milestone on the calendar is the staging of the NATSIAA – National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Art Awards by the Museum and Gallery of the Northern Territory– this year slated for 10 August 2023 – 14 January 2024. In 1922, Kahlo enrolled at the renowned National Preparatory School. She was one of the few female students to attend the school, and she became known for her jovial spirit and her love of colorful, traditional clothes and jewelry. Worth mentioning also is UQ Art Museum’s group exhibition, We Are Electric: Extraction, Extinction and Post-Carbon Futures centring eco-critical conversations around energy futures and extinction (14 February– 24 June), and Patricia Piccinini ’s No Fear of Depths at Cairns Art Gallery (18 February – 16 April), showing works resulting from a Gallery-initiated research residency in Far North Queensland, where Piccinini created a major body of work exploring the specificity and fecundity of tropical life forms in the region. Another survey exhibition that promises to be a standout in November is especially for Modernist inclined art lovers. Geelong Art Gallery will present John Nixon – Four Decades, 500 Prints, a comprehensive exhibition and first serious look at Nixon’s print making oeuvre (18 November – 11 March 2024, free).

One not to be missed in Queensland, is the exhibition Looking Out, Looking In at QAGOGA, (11 March – 6 August, free). It explores the genre of the self-portrait, a distinct form of portraiture. In Canberra, the National Photographic Portrait Prize 2023 will again be staged at the National Portrait Gallery (17 June – 1 October), while in Brisbane, artist Michael Zavros offers his own photo-real take on portraiture in his exhibition The Favourite at GOMA. Michael Zavros, ‘The Favourite’, survey exhibition at QAGOMA. Image: Supplied courtesy the artist.Despite her relatively short life, Kahlo's legacy continues to resonate with people all over the world. Her art has been the subject of numerous exhibitions. In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in Kahlo's life and work, with new exhibitions and events celebrating her enduring influence. In South Australia, JamFactory will launch the national touring exhibition New Exuberance: contemporary Australian textile designTextiles in Art, Design and Fashion (17 February – 16 April), which promises to shift the lens on, and dialogue around, this medium’s impact. The Australia Design Centre in Sydney is currently working on a fascinating project that it will launch in November, ‘exploring non-visual senses and art making’. The Centre is working with the craft-focused publishing platform Garland to produce the exhibition that looks at the non-visual senses – taste, sound, smell and touch, and how they help us ‘reconnect’ with the world, and expand craft beyond solely the visual (free). A sure highlight for September will be the solo exhibition by Laotian-Australian artist Savanhdary Vongpoothorn, which spans over two decades of practice and premieres a large-scale kinetic wall based sculpture at Campbelltown Art Centre (4 September – 15 October). Vongpoothorn’s work interweaves Lao cultural references with Australian and other cultural influences: from Australian Aboriginal art to Scottish tartans, to Indian miniatures and now to Japanese Buddhism. Irreverent … Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, wedding portrait, 21 August 1929. Photograph: Victor Reyes/BBC/Rogan Productions

Kahlo was born Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón on July 6, 1907, in Coyoacán, Mexico City, Mexico. Too often, documentaries about art and artists can lean towards the pretentious and stodgy. Not so with Becoming Frida Kahlo, the first of a three-part series on the legendary Mexican painter, which canters along at a celebratory pace. This opening episode, The Making and Breaking, squashes a great deal of information and insight about Kahlo’s early life into an hour, and sets up a gripping and convincing portrait of the great artist that she would become. By the end, Kahlo’s work has taken a turn towards darkness, and we are confronted with the pain that drove her to create. “I had to paint it because I felt murdered by life,” she says. A highlight for March is the return of Melbourne Now at NGV Australia for its second edition. Celebrating new and ambitious local art and design across a range of contemporary disciplines, including fashion and jewellery, painting, sculpture, architecture, ceramics, video, performance, printmaking and publishing, it will include 200-plus Victoria-based artists, including 60 new commissions (24 March – 20 August, free).In Sydney, Carriageworks will present the first major solo exhibition by artist Salote Tawale, drawing on her Indigenous Fijian and Anglo-Australian heritage to consider how memory relates to identity and place. With the exhibition space conceived as a ‘memory bank’, Tawale will bring together paintings, sculpture, installation and video to investigate the complex and, at times, unreliable nature of memories (11 October– 10 December, free). Salote Tawale, Carriageworks Clothing Store Artist Studios, 2022. Image: Jacquie Manning. Kahlo reconnected with Rivera in 1928. He encouraged her artwork, and the two began a relationship. During their early years together, Kahlo often followed Rivera based on where the commissions that Rivera received were. In 1930, they lived in San Francisco, California. They then went to New York City for Rivera’s show at the Museum of Modern Art and later moved to Detroit for Rivera’s commission with the Detroit Institute of Arts. Family Calendar - At Grupo Erik we care about the environment and contribute using sustainable materials and FSC certified paper. Full of top-quality illustrations for every month!