By the end, Kahlo’s work has taken a turn towards darkness, and we are confronted with the pain that drove her to create. “I had to paint it because I felt murdered by life,” she says. The show, created by Italian film producer and exhibition creator Massimiliano Siccardi and featuring original music by Italian composer Luca Longobardi, is quite different than the Van Gogh — it offers more of a narrative. “Immersive Van Gogh” features an abstract mashup of meditative, melancholic imagery that’s alternately soothing and haunting. By contrast, “Immersive Frida Kahlo” tells a story — if by necessity. Unlike with Van Gogh, the artist’s images are not in the public domain. So the producers had to license images, and they supplemented the work with photographs of Kahlo and others in her life, such as her husband, Diego Rivera, and her family. Kahlo reconnected with Rivera in 1928. He encouraged her artwork, and the two began a relationship. During their early years together, Kahlo often followed Rivera based on where the commissions that Rivera received were. In 1930, they lived in San Francisco, California. They then went to New York City for Rivera’s show at the Museum of Modern Art and later moved to Detroit for Rivera’s commission with the Detroit Institute of Arts. Despite her relatively short life, Kahlo's legacy continues to resonate with people all over the world. Her art has been the subject of numerous exhibitions. In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in Kahlo's life and work, with new exhibitions and events celebrating her enduring influence.

Also worth visiting in May is Milton Moon: Craftingmodernism at AGSA. One of the most important Australian potters of the 20th and early 21st centuries is examined in this important exhibition looking at his 60-year practice and its impact (6 May – 6 August, free). June I tried to drown my sorrows, but the bastards learned how to swim, and now I am overwhelmed with this decent and good feeling.

It interestingly coincides with the return of The National: Australian Art Nowfor its fourth iteration. Presented across the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Carriageworks and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, the exhibition opens across rolling dates, and offers a dialogue on making now. It has been curated by an all-female curatorium this time, free. Kahlo was born Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón on July 6, 1907, in Coyoacán, Mexico City, Mexico. Escape the winter in July and head to Queensland for the return of Cairns Indigenous Art Fair (CIAF), with new Artistic Director Francoise Lane at the helm. The 2023 CIAF will be centred on the theme ‘Weaving Our Future: Claiming our Sovereignty’. It will be held 13–16 July with a multidimensional program of exhibitions, markets, music, dance, fashion, craft, theatre and more. But the show is as much about Kahlo’s joys and passion for life and art as it is about her pain, as seen through colorful butterflies, blooming flowers and self-portraits of the artist. And the always popular Head On Photo Festival (NSW) will return across the month of November. December

After a triumphant return in 2022, Sydney Contemporary (NSW) will again be held at Carriageworks, 7-10 September. Worth mentioning also is UQ Art Museum’s group exhibition, We Are Electric: Extraction, Extinction and Post-Carbon Futures centring eco-critical conversations around energy futures and extinction (14 February– 24 June), and Patricia Piccinini ’s No Fear of Depths at Cairns Art Gallery (18 February – 16 April), showing works resulting from a Gallery-initiated research residency in Far North Queensland, where Piccinini created a major body of work exploring the specificity and fecundity of tropical life forms in the region. As with “Immersive Van Gogh,” the lounge area features custom artworks designed by the show’s creative director, David Korins (set designer for “Hamilton”), including a mosaic tile installation of Kahlo based on one of her 1940s-era self-portraits and a cylindrical, Rubik’s Cube-like wooden sculpture, featuring prints of different Kahlo self-portraits. Visitors are invited to spin the different layers in the work, mixing and matching Kahlo’s facial elements. One not to be missed in Queensland, is the exhibition Looking Out, Looking In at QAGOGA, (11 March – 6 August, free). It explores the genre of the self-portrait, a distinct form of portraiture. Frida Kahlo, the renowned Mexican artist, has left an indelible mark on the art world with her vibrant, expressive and deeply personal works. Born in 1907, Kahlo's life was marked by physical pain and emotional turmoil, but she channelled these experiences into her art, creating works that are both personal and universal.In 1939, Kahlo went to live in Paris for a time. There she exhibited some of her paintings and developed friendships with such artists as Marcel Duchamp and Pablo Picasso.