Frida Kahlo’s face is certainly a familiar one—unibrow, piercing gaze, crowned in florals. I’ve known her through her self-portraits that read in a haunting but intimate way. Fifty-five of her more than 200 works are self-portraits, so it makes sense that her image precedes her story. Visiting Frida: Beyond the Myth at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond offered me something I hadn’t really considered before: a deeper understanding of how she became the Frida Kahlo we know today.

The exhibition begins with her early years and centers a connection with her father, a photographer. His influence explains her comfort in front of the camera, and it’s clear that long before she became a muse for the world, Friday was already someone’s subject and object of affection. Although he captured her often as a young girl, the exhibition reveals how her youthful vibrancy seemed to fade with time. Through photographs, sketches, and her evolving painting style, we can see how her self-image that was once bold and defiant eventually took on hints of sorrow and complexity.

Frida’s work has always been iconic, but this was the first time I truly saw her as a style icon. In her early years, she experimented with androgyny, and it wasn’t until later when she married that she leaned into softness and femininity, using traditional Mexican dress as a celebration of her heritage and a canvas for her identity. The exhibit invites you to consider her fashion as equal parts armor, storytelling, and resistance.

What struck me most deeply was the undercurrent of tragedy throughout her life. Polio. A near-fatal bus crash. Miscarriages. Chronic pain. Maybe it struck me harder because I was completely unaware. As if her early life wasn’t tragic enough, her rocky relationship with Diego Rivera seemed to make matters worse in some ways. While he was an early source of creative inspiration, I couldn’t help but wonder—had Frida been thoroughly and consistently loved, could she maybe have lived longer? Would some of her suffering have been spared? Between his affairs, her own heartbreaks related to motherhood, and the way her artistry was often sidelined to support his, there was clearly an emotional weight to her life that was evident in this exhibit.

As I wandered through the exhibit, I found myself returning to the thought that Frida Kahlo was deeply layered and complex, as we all are, but in her relatively early death, we may never grasp all of who she was. This exhibition does make one thing beautifully clear. Although her life was marked by loss, she is now revered and given her flowers in ways she should have always been while alive.