Photo: Diane Kahlo is related to famed artist Frida Kahlo After
spending years trying to get out from under the shadow of
Mexican cultural icon Frida Kahlo, American artist Diane Kahlo
decided to devote her talent to painting subjects that her
famous distant relative would have found compelling, such as the
murders of women in Ciudad Juarez. “I believe that Frida would
be very interested in what is happening to women in Ciudad
Juarez, and in everything to do with immigration and politics on
the border,” Diane said in an interview with Efe. “Wall of
Memories: Las Desaparecidas de Cuidad Juarez” (“The Missing
Women of Juarez”) is made up of 100 portraits and 50 symbols
painted by Diane as a tribute to the more than 1,000 women and
girls kidnapped or slain over the past 30 years in the city just
across the border from El Paso, Texas. The 61-year-old artist,
whose grandfather was a cousin of Frida’s father, Wilhelm Kahlo,
described her exhibition as a “reminder of the epidemic of
violence against women and girls”