Cosmic Aspirations: Considerations on the Museum, Immortality, and Frida Kahlo

Abstract

Today’s understandings of the role and responsibilities of museums have been configured in the context of European modernity. However, an alternative, more radical museology has been produced within the artistic and political vision of early 20th century Russian vanguards, where museums where imagined as institutions with future-filled potential. In what follows, I look at the ‘Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up’ exhibition, held at the V&A in 2018, while shedding light on some of the core ideas informing Cosmist museology and its potential relevance to fashion curation. In particular, by focusing on displays of Kahlo’s prosthetic leg and clothes, I aim to raise critical and creative questions on the representation of bodily experience in the museum today. This focus on the fleshy foundations of existence brings to the surface an innovative approach to museology, which takes a critical stance towards traditional art history by facilitating the encounter not so much with art practice, but with the figure of the artist herself. This approach incarnates the utopian principle of the celebration and eternal extension of life, which was at the heart of Cosmist museum.