If you haven’t wandered in the doors of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago lately, there’s a lot to catch up on. MCA Chicago has bid adieu to Illuminated Things and put away the shovel, but there’s plenty of new and exciting things to see.
"Unbound: Contemporary Art After Frida Kahlo" is a beautifully curated exhibit that speaks to four themes Kahlo herself emphasized in her storied works—gender performance, national identity, the political body, and the “absent” or traumatized body.
This isn’t the MCA’s first encounter with Frida. In 1978, MCA Chicago was the first museum to display Kahlo’s works in a solo exhibition. This goes beyond the body of Kahlo’s work though, past the fame of the artist and her iconic Mexican folk art style and more to what she was trying to say with her work. The exhibition space gives each of the four ideas equal and separate space, but the exhibit never seems disjointed, and flows seamlessly from one idea to another almost conversationally.
