“Ionic, Corinthian, Doric.” The three of us wedged in the backseat of a taxi, Mum called out to my brother and me, pointing to the buildings passing by. Surrounded by the captivating architecture of Washington, D.C., she brought our attention to the details, teaching us about the classical orders. The basis of civilization’s most iconic buildings, columns are fundamental components of structure, but a closer look reveals how they also distinguish class and engrained identity. Ten years old at the time, I questioned what kind of columns I would have if I were a building. I wondered if, simply by existing, I had my own kind of “columns” that others could judge me by. Staring, years later, at Frida Kahlo’s La Columna Rota, I continue to contemplate columns’ meaning as distinctions of identity, and in the context of disability culture, I see the broken column as dissolution of predetermined classifications.

Born in 1907, Kahlo contracted polio at only eight years old, presenting her with physical difficulties and the hardships of disability early on. She was an advocate of the Mexican Communist Party in her adult life, and drawing upon folk art styles, she depicted themes such as gender and disability in her art. Although she is largely recognized for her own work, Kahlo is also known for her intense but tumultuous marriage to the famous muralist Diego Rivera.¹ Remarried after initial divorce, the two had an unusual relationship wherein each had numerous affairs, Kahlo with both men and women.² In recent years, Kahlo  has reemerged in U.S. pop culture, propelled by the rise of social media and the neofeminist movement. Her present relevance in the media is largely based on the depiction of her as a feminist artist icon. Based on her reclamation of the unibrow, Kahlo’s mainstream image fails to address the multi-dimensionality of her work, such as that seen in La Columna Rota. A self-portrait, the painting depicts Kahlo in a frozen, immobile state. Through this painting, Kahlo opens up about her struggles after a bus accident and with Polio. Made in 1944, the painting is one of Kahlo’s most vulnerable reflections of herself and specifically of her physical disability, providing insight into the dynamic existence unseen in Kahlo’s commercialized image. 

Before an arid landscape of patchy earth and grass, stands the subject of her own painting, Kahlo. Wearing nothing but a white cloth draped across her lower torso and a matching white-strapped back brace, Kahlo looks into the eyes of the viewer, baring her breasts and all of her body the brace fails to conceal. Split down the middle, her spine is seen through her torn flesh; however, in its place stands a fragmented, Ionic column. Kahlo also depicts herself with her usual unibrow as well as a face full of tears and needles puncturing her skin all over her body. Kahlo’s physical injuries and depiction of her unobscured self reveal a sense of isolation yet reclamation of identity as a disabled queer woman of color. 

Central to La Columna Rota’s message is Kahlo’s decision to paint herself nude. Though she highlights her struggles with disability via obvious indicators like the brace and physical injuries, she reveals much more about her identity through nudity. Her lack of clothing serves to establish openness and a candid tone towards the viewer. The idea of fashion as self-expression was not entirely true for Kahlo, who chose  clothes out of conformity to society and her husband. The traditional Tehuana dresses she wore are often associated today with her free-spirited, radical identity; however, Kahlo actually wore them to hide her injury and to assume the role of Diego Rivera’s perfect Mexican wife.³ The loose-fitting layers of Tehuana style perfectly covered her back brace, allowing her to “pass” as non-disabled while also expressing patriotism to appease Diego’s intense political beliefs. In this regard, Kahlo’s nudity rebels against society’s demands, in the personal context of her marriage and more broadly in terms of her disability. Although she could have simply dressed herself in a way that showed her brace without being naked, her unobscured body highlights a desire to be seen and the sexual side of herself. Rejecting the notion of disabled people being asexual, Kahlo wants society to confront her sexuality. By pairing her brace with her nudity, Khalo shows there can be a positive association between disability and sensuality. They are not antithetical. She can be at once vulnerable and outward with her disability as well as with her sexuality. Creating a space in the arts, where disability and sexuality coexist, Kahlo’s self-portrait allowed for a disabled audience to see themselves represented as desiring and desirable. Serving as a remix to the multitude of beautiful, naked, and able-bodied women saturating art history, Kahlo’s self-portrait put the power in the hands of the disabled community. The paintbrush in her hands as opposed to that of an outsider, she depicted her body, not for fetishization of abled people, but for her own validation. In the context of disability culture, the image dismantles stigma, communicating that disabled people are no less in control nor less sexual than anyone else. 

A small but poignant detail of the painting which one might miss at first, are the dark, piercing nails adorning Kahlo’s body. Their ability to “blend into the background” of Kahlo’s skin suggests lacking recognition for her deep and encompassing pain. Although she very clearly is cut open on her stomach, the addition of the obscured nails imparts an unseen source of agony. Coming from all directions, coating her whole being, are these tiny injuries, seemingly a part of her. While the bigger wound on her torso is an obvious reference to her spinal injury, the nails are not directly related to a physical pain, indicating their metaphorical role. The accumulated small injuries serve perhaps to show mental and emotional hurt. All the smaller injustices and hurdles that come with her life and disability add up to an even more debilitating state. The inability to move, the discomfort of wearing a brace, of feeling like an outsider. All of it. Kahlo sheds light on how large, visible injuries and those more common are both sources of pain, deserving of attention. All can relate to the sentiment, but especially in disability culture, Kahlo’s depiction of pains large and small points to how day-to-day inconveniences, like lack of access representation, can be as pressing as a physical handicap. A representation of the little but powerful accumulations of microaggressions and “small” things, the needles in Kahlo remind us that it is okay to feel hurt by “little cuts,” which might not appear as deep, but sting as much. 

Congruent with the nails in her body are the tears stippling Kahlo’s cheeks. Piercing white, the teardrops embody her pain. Like the symbol of a heart, the droplet shape is synonymous with sadness. However, in the context of a self-portrait, the intentional act of hand painting each drop reveals how Kahlo takes control of her suffering. Not subjected to someone else’s pity, Kahlo exposes her struggle in a way undefined by others. She openly depicts her suffering with disability because she doesn’t think it is something to be ashamed of. Although mainstream depictions of disability often feed into tropes like “Disabled means Helpless,” she asserts that sadness and disability doesn’t need to be defined this way.⁴ Kahlo can show her tears and be sincere without playing into the ideals that disabled people are simply objects of pity. Rejecting the need to hide her pain or appear strong, she accepts that disability can entail sadness but also that people are dynamic. Kahlo’s vulnerability invites the disabled community to embrace all the ways in which they are human, to take back the narrative without letting one story define them. 

Finally, essential to the understanding of Kahlo’s painting, is the significance of the column. The shattered pillar in Kahlo’s back holds significance as a symbol of identity, within and beyond the disabled community. The choice to use a column as her spine is at once aesthetically astute, a recognition of the similar appearance between both white objects of support. In this sense alone, it serves as an impactful comparison of a broken building and her wounded body. Yet, the emphasis on the column, as the name and focal point of the painting, demonstrate how Kahlo’s connection to the column stretches beyond her injured back. That the self-portrait is purposefully titled La Columna Rota (“The Broken Column”) asserts their synonymity: Kahlo as a broken Ionic column. 

Spiraled on either side, like the horns of a ram, the Ionic column is defined by its scroll-shaped top. Less floral than Corinthian yet more ornate than Doric, Ionic columns merge grace with formality. Kahlo relates her image to the Ionic style, through her internal and external pressure to be this well-kept woman of tradition. Supporting herself and doing it beautifully, like princesses carrying books on their heads, Kahlo feels pulled to appear “Ionic,” without flaw and free of disability. However, her inherent individuality, passion to create, and physical limitations rendered her far from society’s blueprint of “perfection.” Everything about Kahlo’s life that makes her unlike existing tropes springs from within her, breaking the role she is told to play and cracking the Ionic column. 

Despite the desolate tone of the painting, I would argue that La Columna Rota is not a lamentation over Kahlo’s nonconformity so much as a coming to terms. She exposes, through her back brace and through her skin, that at her core is not the picturesque, poised self she presents to the world. She could easily have painted beige where the white of her brace showed, and not revealed everything inside of her: the truth. She does not “fit the mold,” and wants people to see that. For a disabled audience, she sends the message of self acceptance, of encouragement to be sincere. Opening up (literally), Kahlo advocates for visibility of her honest identity, including her physical limitations. She chose to paint the column, not beside her but inside of her, accepting disability as part of self, honoring the notion of a bodymind. The painting subverts any narrative of disabilities as extension, demolishing mainstream models of identification. 

La Columna Rota is a testament to the disabled experience. It is an admittance of hardship and vulnerability, but it is also a statement of independence. It is an anthem of self-reflection, fearlessness, and honesty for people who do not belong to predetermined classifications. Where the tropes end and the archetypes cease to apply, there are an infinite number of people who live without representation. Not only does Kahlo break these barriers through her likeness and existence as a disabled woman in the arts, but she sets forth to the world a new order of identity, a space for those which any number of columns could never come close to accurately describing. In terms of disability culture, La Columna Rota exists as a statement of resignation, from the systems of classification that dominate society but fall short of reality. The problem isn’t any person’s body so much as the shortcomings of the system we live in. Therefore, the column inside Kahlo is not really broken.

The compartmentalization of people,
the “Ionic, Corinthian, and Doric,”
is a broken system.

1. “Frida and Diego,” The New York Times, January 1, 2006.
2. Sara Kettler, “Behind Frida Kahlo’s Real and Rumored Affairs With Men and Women,” Biography.com, A&E Networks Television, July 14 2020.
3. Kyra McConnell, “The Importance of Frida Kahlo’s Clothes,” July 6, 2020.
4. “Disabled Means Helpless,” TvTropes.org.