Frida Kahlo Speaks

A Letter from the Bardo

Welcome to a new feature here on Syncopated Justice, “Letters from the Bardo.” In Tibetan Buddhism, the Bardo is a realm between death and rebirth, where souls linger, reckon, confess, and occasionally laugh at the absurdity of it all.

Each Wednesday, I’ll be channeling surreal, soul-baring monologues from some of the most iconic, infamous, and unexpected voices in human history. From revolutionaries to pop stars, tricksters to tyrants, these poetic transmissions crackle with insight, irony, heartbreak, and cosmic clarity.

Each voice emerges fully formed: dreamlike, honest, sometimes hilarious, sometimes terrifying—but always human. No biography. No judgment. Just the soul, stripped bare in the fog of eternity.

✉️ Letter from the Bardo

By Frida Kahlo

Queridos vivos,

So this is the Bardo.

Not heaven. Not hell. Just the in-between—soft, foggy, and strangely bureaucratic. A place where echoes replace answers and time loops like an old film reel melting in the projector. There are no clocks, no borders, no skin. But somehow, pain still lingers. That familiar ache in my spine pulses faintly, like a distant drumbeat. Some ghosts tell me it’s a phantom memory. I think it’s the price of being unfinished.

I expected something more… grand. Or at least theatrical. Día de los Muertos marigolds. A parade of ancestors. A cosmic mariachi band. Instead, it’s quiet. Reflective. Like being stuck in the frame of a painting I didn’t finish.

I hear I’m an icon now.

My face—on coffee mugs, lunchboxes, postage stamps. Little girls wear unibrows and flower crowns for Halloween. Pop stars name-drop me. Tourists line up outside La Casa Azul and take selfies in front of my bed, as if it’s sacred. As if lying there with a crushed spine was a kind of miracle.

They don’t know.

They don’t know how many nights I screamed into my pillow. How many paintings were born from rage, not inspiration. They don’t know that I painted my own reality because the real world refused to accept me as I was: broken, bisexual, Mexican, female, furious. They want the myth. Not the woman. They prefer me as a saint, not as a struggle.

Yes, I am grateful that people remember me. But I am not flattered by their convenience.

Art was never supposed to be easy. It is not decoration. It is declaration. Every canvas I touched was a scream, a protest, a love letter to pain. When I painted, I wasn’t trying to be admired. I was trying to survive. That’s what they forget.

They call me a “feminist icon” now. That’s fine. But I wasn’t painting for feminism. I was painting because no one else could tell my story. And because if I didn’t, I might disappear completely—another broken brown woman erased by history.

I worry, from here in the fog, that the world has confused visibility with value. That art has become another market—clicks, likes, product placement. Your new museums are white rooms full of white walls hung with clean, clever irony. Everything’s ironic now. Even sincerity is wrapped in quotes. You praise artists for being “raw” but punish them for being too real.

And yet—art endures.

Even in a world that commodifies everything, art finds a way. I feel it. Every time a girl in Oaxaca sketches her reflection with a borrowed pencil. Every time a queer kid in Ohio draws wings on their pain. Every time someone picks up a brush not to be famous but to feel seen. There is rebellion in that act. There is revolution in creation. Always has been.

You ask me, what is the place of art in society today?

It is the same as it ever was:

To disturb.

To demand.

To dream.

To witness.

When the world falls apart—and it always does—art is the thread that stitches it back together. Not cleanly. Not perfectly. But honestly. Art reminds you that you are human. That you feel. That you break and rebuild. That there is still you beneath the rubble.

But you must let it speak truth.

Art must not become polite. Or profitable. Or palatable. It must make people feel something they didn’t want to feel. It must be dangerous again. It must ask the questions your leaders won’t. It must love loudly, even in the face of fascism. Especially then.

I look around your world—yes, I can see it from here, through a kind of stained-glass haze—and I see how hungry you are. Not for more things. But for meaning. You have more technology than ever, but less intimacy. More followers, fewer friends. Your lives are curated but hollow. You scroll past real emotion like it’s an ad. You swipe past suffering. You numb yourselves with distraction.

But art—real art—won’t let you look away. It demands your attention. It invades your comfort. It opens you up. And that’s terrifying. But also beautiful.

Do not let corporations define beauty. Do not let museums hoard culture behind velvet ropes. Do not let algorithms decide what matters. And for the love of everything sacred, stop making “content.” Make art.

And if you’re reading this thinking, “But I’m not an artist,” let me tell you something.

You are.

If you’ve ever cried from a song lyric. If you’ve ever scribbled your pain into a notebook. If you’ve ever danced in your kitchen when no one was watching. If you’ve ever kissed someone like the world was ending—that was art. That was holy. That was yours.

And you must protect it. Not with guns. With truth. With vulnerability. With joy.

I think about Diego sometimes, even here. He wanders in and out of my dreams like a cigarette in the dark. I loved him like a storm. He loved me like a mirror—imperfectly, but with awe. We created and destroyed each other in loops. Maybe that’s what love is. Maybe it’s just two people painting the same wound from opposite sides.

Sometimes I wonder what he’d think of this world now. The way murals are painted over with ads. The way revolution is sold as fashion. But I think he’d still paint. I know I would.

Even here in the Bardo, I sketch the souls I meet. Some are soft like fog. Others hum with unresolved music. There’s a boy who plays violin with no hands. A woman who weeps thread. An old man who carves memories into the air. They remind me that death is not the end of creation. It’s just another canvas.

So, dear mortals—paint.

Paint with your blood if you have to.

Paint with your silence.

Paint with your anger.

Paint with your love.

Make art that screams. Make art that whispers.

But make art.

Because it is how you remember who you are.

And one day, when you pass into this in-between place, it may be the only thing that follows you:

Not your money. Not your politics. Not your pretty face.

Just the echo of your soul in brushstrokes and rhythm and rhyme.

I remain,

Frida Kahlo

Still bleeding. Still laughing.

Still painting the truth in colors they cannot name.

_ _ _ _

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Until we meet again, let your conscience be your guide.