Duality
Frida Kahlo and "The Substance"
Frida Kahlo’s Tree of Hope (1946) depicts two versions of the artist. Divided down the middle, one Frida sits on a wooden chair and meets the viewer’s eye. Next to her on the canvas, another version of Frida faces away from us, lying on a hospital trolley, her exposed back revealing bloody surgical incisions.
A bus crash when Kahlo was a teenager resulted in a lifetime of disability, prolonged spells in bed, multiple health problems, and various orthopedic surgeries and implements. Returning to Mexico from one trip to the United States, Kahlo became bedbound and had to wear a steel corset for eight months. But she continued to paint. In a letter to a friend, she referred to Tree of Hope as “nothing but the result of the damned operation!”
Kahlo was no stranger to duality. In 1939, she painted The Two Fridas, where two versions of herself sit side-by-side, one wearing a white European-style Victorian dress and the other a traditional Tehuana dress, their hearts connected by a shared vein, and the blood of her open heart - she clutches a pair of forceps - dripping on her white dress. Kahlo created the work after her divorce from Diego Rivera, and one interpretation is that he rejected the “European” version of Kahlo and only accepted her Tehuana self (who clutches a tiny Rivera portrait). Sarah M. Misemer, a professor of Hispanic studies, argued that Kahlo's representation of herself as a multi-racial individual is a cultural symbol for the Mexican nation. Kahlo said the image represents the memory of a childhood imaginary friend.
Tree of Hope is a painting of juxtaposition: darkness and light, suffering and hope, defeat and perseverance. Kahlo’s wounds are open and pre-stitched, the lacerations bloody, her body, pain, and vulnerability on display for all to see. Yet her other self stares defiantly at the viewer, holding a pink orthopedic corset in one hand and a flag bearing the words “Cielito Lindo” or “Tree of Hope, Remain Strong” in the other. Kahlo created the work for her patron, Eduardo Morillo Safa, and originally included a skeleton but removed it to please the recipient. In a letter to Safa, Kahlo wrote: “There is a skeleton (or death) that flees in the face of my will to live.”
I have been thinking about the painting’s imagery and wondering if - from a visual POV - it inspired some of the art direction for a recent piece of media…
Yesterday, the 2025 Academy Awards nominations were announced, including five nominations for Coralie Fargeat’s body horror The Substance. While I was not as enamored of this body horror treatise on Hollywood, celebrity, and female aging as many colleagues and fans, I understand the film’s appeal and why it has resonated with so many. Plus, it’s cool to see a female-directed horror film receive acclaim from the awards bodies and industry it is skewering, and it's great to see Demi Moore finally receive recognition after over forty years in the industry. Regardless of how I feel about the film, some imagery has stuck with me.
If you haven’t seen The Substance, Elisabeth Sparkle (Moore) - once the toast of Hollywood - resorts to a secretive experimental product called “The Substance” to resuscitate her dwindling celebrity and career. The drug allows Elisabeth to ‘birth’ a “newer, better version” of herself through her spine, with the caveat that both the host and the new body, named Sue (Margaret Qualley), take turns in the world - one on, one off for seven days at a time - but with two bodies sharing the same DNA and with Sue enjoying herself far too much to uphold her side of the bargain, things inevitably derail.
There is so much comparison to the film in terms of imagery: the way the hair is loose and falls to one side, the exposure of the scars, and how both women are on their side - one on a gurney, the other on a tiled floor - with their duel self next to them. While I’m not saying painting and film have explicitly similar themes, I cannot wonder if the painting served as a reference point in the film’s art direction.
Kahlo was a brilliant and phenomenal figure with artistic talent, passion, strength, and resilience.
In the Hollywood machine, being a woman of a certain age and surviving and thriving in the ageist capital of the movie world is an act of deviance and survival in itself.