In 1938, Frida Kahlo received one of her first commissions, a self-portrait from industrialist and philanthropist Anson Conger Goodyear. According to source material, the monkeys featured in the painting symbolise the children that Kahlo was never able to bear.
In 2019, emerging artists from the University of Melbourne received a commission inspired by Frida’s Self-Portrait with Monkeys. Each of their works divulges a deeply personal, yet unattainable desire. In response to this commission, the artists comment on their desire to end existing cultural brutalities and more internalised conflicts such as grief and loss.
Place and Perspective (composed in two parts respectively) explores what it is to experience loss. Place navigates how it feels to be absorbed in loss and the longing for the impossible restoration of how things were. Perspective provides a moment for internal reflection. Moving past the chaos of loss, there is an opportunity to ponder your current position, where you have been and where you are going.
