Frida Kahlo’s ‘Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird’ (1940)

Favourite purchase from my trip to London this summer: Frida Kahlo’s ‘Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird’ (1940)

 

The poster I purchased from Tate, London framed at my home in Dublin

There is something about this painting that keeps drawing me towards it, even though it is steeped in pain and tragedy. Perhaps it is the colors. Or perhaps it is the way Frida holds her head high, her eyes looking straight ahead, even while surrounded by symbols of suffering. She looks so peaceful and composed even when life was reaching its hardest point.

I studied more about Frida recently and, for a while, I was completely hooked on her. So, I was especially happy that I got to see ‘Frida: The Making of an Icon’ at Tate Modern this summer. The exhibition explores not just Frida the artist, but the many versions of Frida she created and the complicated woman behind the icon.

Books of reference

Nickolas Muray

Nick and Frida

The painting was made in 1940, shortly after both Frida’s divorce from Diego Rivera and the end of her decade-long, on and off affair with the photographer Nickolas Muray. Frida and Diego remarried later that same year. Frida had told Nick that this painting was for him and gave it to him once she completed the painting. It remained in his New York home for more than two decades.

Nick was not simply a man who appeared in Frida’s life for a moment. Their relationship was passionate and complicated, and even after their affair ended, they remained friends until her death. What makes this painting even more special to me is knowing how deeply Frida felt about Nick. In her letters, she wrote to him with extraordinary tenderness, telling him that she adored him and had never loved anyone in quite the same way. And in her writings around the time of her divorce, she identified her love for Nick as one of the principal reasons she left Diego. 

Knowing the importance of Nick in Frida’s life and that this painting passed directly from Frida into Nick’s hands makes this poster feel even more special to me.

The spider Monkey

Diego Rivera had gifted Frida a spider monkey, which appears beside her in the portrait. To me, it almost feels like another quiet expression of a relationship she could never quite let go of.

Frida and Diego remarried in 1940, despite everything that had happened between them, including his affair with her own sister. What I found particularly interesting was that Frida reportedly set a few conditions before agreeing to marry Diego again, one of them was that she wouldn’t take any money from Diego and would share the household expenses equally. I really loved that even though it was little late, she finally decided to not depend on a man financially.

Another one of the conditions she put forward was that they would not make love, as she felt she had developed a psychological barrier that prevented her from doing so. All of which was accepted by Diego.

It made me wonder about the nature of their relationship after everything they had been through and, more broadly, about how platonic love can exist between two people who had once shared such an intense and passionate relationship. For someone as expressive, sensual and emotionally intense as Frida, the idea of continuing to love someone while no longer being physically intimate with them feels both fascinating and difficult to understand.

One of the hardest lessons in life, I think, is learning to let go of what hurts us.

But who are we to judge?

I say that knowing how difficult letting go can be. I have held on to my own bloodline even when it was hurting me from the inside out.

Perhaps that is why I find Frida so compelling. She is so much more than one decision, or any single choice she made in her life. She was complicated, wounded, passionate, resilient and unapologetically herself. Frida wasn't simply choosing between a “good” relationship and a “bad” one. She was deeply attached to two very different people(Nick and Diego), and her own writings show just how conflicted she was.

And this portrait is full of little symbols.

The butterflies, the dragonfly-like flowers, the black cat, the monkey, the thorns and the hummingbird have all been interpreted in different ways. As symbols of love, death, hope, suffering, resurrection, Mexican culture and Frida’s own relationships and identity. There is no single agreed-upon meaning for everything in the painting, which is perhaps what makes it so fascinating.

 

The hummingbird

Tate describes it as a ‘dead hummingbird’, hanging from the thorn necklace like a pendant.

But when I look at it, I see a living hummingbird. Perhaps that is simply my own interpretation, but I prefer it that way.

A dead, dried, or mummified hummingbird is used as the love charm (known as a chuparosa) in traditional Mexican folk magic and spiritual practices. I believe that the hummingbird is alive, since the other animals in the painting are interpreted as living and also because I like to imagine that Frida saw something hopeful in it perhaps even the luck of having met Nick. I know that is my reading of the painting rather than something we can say with certainty about Frida’s intention. 

 

This rather small oil on canvas painting, measuring approximately 24 by 18 inches (61 × 46 cm), is now part of the Nickolas Muray Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.

The thorn necklace

To me, it is the life she adorned herself with even when it was hurting her.

Beauty and pain existing together.

She lived with an extraordinary amount of physical pain. She had polio as a child, and at eighteen she was severely injured in a devastating bus accident that left her with lifelong injuries. Her health deteriorated over the years, and she underwent numerous surgeries and endured painful medical experiences, including a miscarriage and later the amputation of her right leg.

She died in 1954, at just 47.

The black cat & The Butterflies

This was the exact reason I deliberately hid this purchase from my Amma. I am quite certain she would notice the cat before anything else and immediately demand that I throw the poster away. In her eyes, it would do nothing but invite bad luck.

The butterflies, the resurrection, the life, the love, and all the intricate layers of symbolism? I am pretty sure those would go completely unnoticed.

Amma's superstitious instincts would instantly clash with Kahlo’s deliberate artistic choices. In this self portrait of Frida Kahlo, the black cat perched on Frida's left shoulder is a complex omen. While it aligns perfectly with my Amma's fears as a universal symbol of bad luck and impending doom, Kahlo used it to mirror her own internal reality. Painted shortly after her painful divorce from Diego Rivera, the crouching cat symbolizes her profound grief, sense of betrayal, and the looming shadow of death. Tragically, while the delicate butterflies hovering above Frida’s head signify hope and spiritual rebirth, the sinister posture of the black cat suggests that misfortune is never far behind. A tense duality that my Amma would likely refuse to invite into our home.

I was fascinated by all the animals in the painting. Frida herself kept a collection of exotic animals at Casa Azul, her famous Blue House in Mexico City, which I very much hope to visit someday. The spider monkey in this portrait was one of the animals connected to her home and her relationship with Diego.

I had initially assumed that the monkeys must have been a spiritual or personal symbols for her. Spider monkeys appear repeatedly in Frida’s self-portraits; eight of her 55 self-portraits feature them and she kept them as pets at Casa Azul. But the more I learned, the more I realised that Frida’s paintings were not created in some isolated artistic bubble; she also had to make a living from her work, and the circumstances in which she painted mattered too especially after her divorce in 1939.

This realisation challenged my initial assumption that every recurring image in her paintings must have had a deeply symbolic meaning. I like discovering things that challenge the romantic story I have created in my own head.

Maybe that is also why I love this painting.

There is so much happening beneath the surface although it is a straightforward piece of Art.

Love. Pain. Betrayal. Beauty. Mortality. Resilience. Desire. And, depending on how you see it, even a little bit of luck.

And perhaps that says something about why we connect with art in the first place. The artist creates it, but somewhere along the way, it becomes ours too.

Asma Khan & Darjeeling Express

Darjeeling Express is one of the restaurants I had been wanting to visit for years, and I finally made it happen on my last trip to London.

My fascination with the restaurant actually began when I watched Asma Khan on Netflix’s Chef’s Table. She was the first British chef, also the first Indian origin Chef to be featured on the series, and the season featuring her episode was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series. This should give you an idea of just how beautiful that episode is.

Picture courtesy to BBC Good Food

Since then, I’ve become increasingly drawn not just to her cooking, but also to her voice. She was named one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People, recognised for her influence on food and social progress. She is also an author, and I particularly enjoy reading her writing and opinions in The Guardian and The Independent. Her writing often goes well beyond food, touching on immigration, women’s rights, inequality and the politics of who gets to cook, eat and belong.

But what makes Asma’s story so fascinating is that food wasn’t where she started.

 

She was a journalist in India, moved to Cambridge after marriage, studied law and completed a PhD in British Constitutional Law at King’s College London. And then, after all those academic achievements including being awarded an honorary fellowship by Oxford, she found herself drawn to something much simpler and much more personal: feeding people.

 

She began with supper clubs in her home in 2012. Those gradually grew into a pop-up in a Soho pub and eventually into Darjeeling Express, which opened in 2017. Today, the restaurant is in Rupert Street, but the heart of it still remains the same: homestyle Indian food, cooked with patience, memories and absolutely no desire to dilute it for anyone.

 

And then there is her kitchen.

An all-women kitchen, many of them South Asian women who had never received formal culinary training. Asma gave home-cooks a professional kitchen and, more importantly, a space where their skills were finally recognised. Some of the women who started with her have gone on to lead kitchens and supper clubs of their own.

There is something incredibly beautiful about that.

 

The food itself feels unapologetically homely. Asma has always been very clear about protecting the integrity of her recipes rather than changing them to suit every possible palate.

And her puchkas…

I mean it when I say, these may be the best I have ever had. I am not sure any pani puri or Golgappas I have eaten across North India can beat them. One bite and it was an instant ticket to heaven for a few seconds. The magic is in the Paani of the puchkas.

On the left is Kheema toastie(a crowd favourite), on top right is Asma's famous Momos  and then below is 'The Puchkas'

In the photo above : Badami Bhaingan (a must-have vegetarian dish if you like aubergine), Saag Paneer, and Kosha Mangsho (a must-have Bengali mutton dish). Asma hates the word “curry”: as she puts it, the British “needed to dumb it down to the lowest common denominator” by calling everything one thing, when Indian cuisine has individual names for its dishes. Better to watch the video than have me attempt to explain it!

I had specifically wanted to try the bhapa doi, but by the time we ordered, it was already finished. They suggested the khoobani ka meetha instead, made with whole apricots. It looked ridiculously simple, but the moment you mix it with the cream on the side… BOOM.

 

A complete explosion of flavour.

 

That, to me, is the magic of really good food. It doesn’t always need to look elaborate. Sometimes a simplest-looking dish can completely surprise you.

On the left is 'khoobani ka meetha' & on the right is 'gajar ka halwa' both served with cream

And the gajar ka halwa deserves its own mention. It is a labour of love, traditionally requiring hours of slow cooking and constant stirring, especially when prepared in large quantities. I have heard Asma mention in an interview that, in her restaurant they cook it fresh everyday and the whole process takes 8 hours of constant stirring.

 

You can definitely taste the patience, time, and affection that went into making this dish at Darjeeling Express.

 

The lassi looked plain and unassuming, but it absolutely blew our minds!

 

But perhaps what I loved most about Darjeeling Express is that the food is only one part of the story.

Asma is outspoken about the way women are treated in professional kitchens and about creating kitchens without the shouting, shaming and hierarchy that define traditional kitchen culture. She has also used food as a vehicle for social causes, from her early supper clubs supporting charity to her work advocating for food justice and women’s empowerment. I enjoyed watching her interview with Vir Sanghvi on Table 1 where she speaks about taking on industry giants like Gordon Ramsay, the glorification of toxic kitchen cultures, and the deeply lonely price of success. She breaks down exactly how kitchens are run, who gets heard, and who gets slapped. (Click Here to watch the full conversation)

In her conversation with Trevor Noah on 'What Now? with Trevor Noah' (Click Here to watch the full podcast) I loved how candid she was about fine dining and the whole obsession with Michelin recognition. She challenges the notion that Indian cuisine must be transformed into a Western fine-dining format to be considered worthy of recognition and also challenges the rituals of fine dining itself.

I laughed, I nodded, and I thought: Yes. That’s Asma.

 

Raw. Unfiltered. Bold. Completely herself.

 

And perhaps that is what I admire the most.

 

She built something successful without losing the reason she started it in the first place: the joy of feeding people, the food she grew up with, the women behind those recipes and the stories that live inside them.

Having long been a fan of Bengali cinema, literature, and music, I have now fallen in love with Bengali cuisine as well.

P.S. I Love you, Asma Khan