Had Theresa May known she was going to have a coughing fit, would she have worn a bracelet comprised of small, painted images of the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo on her right wrist? Or is that precisely why she used that hand to cough into – so that we, the public, could see that in 2005, she went to a blockbuster show at Tate Modern, in London?
A kind reading suggests May is aware of Kahlo’s resurgence in the cultural world. Next year the V&A will host a Kahlo retrospective. Kahlo was also cited as a muse to the designer Roland Mouret’s most recent collection and featured in the Italian fashion house Etro’s pre-fall collection.
As to where the bracelet came from, a gift shop springs to mind, although there’s an excellent likeness on the online craft site, Etsy.
Either way, it’s perhaps a surprising statement for the Tory leader, not least because Kahlo was a communist, married to artist Diego Rivera, a prominent figure in the Mexican Communist party, and a close friend of Leon Trotsky. She also spent her career concerned with the plight of the impoverished, our connectedness to self, nature and the universe, the relationship between pain and identity, and imagined, one day, we could live in a classless society.
• This article was amended on 5 October 2017 to correct the spelling of Diego Rivera’s surname.
