Frida Kahlo has survived almost everything culture has done to her: reverence, reproduction, tote bags, fridge magnets, biopics, branding, bad Halloween costumes, worse “inspired by” menus, and the general flattening that happens when an artist becomes more recognisable as a face than as a mind.
This summer, Tate Modern is taking that problem seriously. Frida: The Making of an Icon, opening on 25 June 2026 and running until 3 January 2027, is framed far from simply another procession of famous self-portraits. The exhibition sets out to examine Kahlo’s “many selves”, bringing together more than 30 of her works alongside garments, jewellery, photographs, memorabilia, works by her contemporaries, and later artists shaped by her influence. It also takes on the phenomenon of Fridamania, the commercial and cultural afterlife through which Kahlo became as much a global image as a painter.
The collaboration starts on Wednesday, 15 July 2026, when Tate Modern and Santiago Lastra will stage KOL at Tate, a one-night-only after-hours exhibition and dining experience built around Kahlo’s life, legacy, and Mexico’s cultural imagination. The evening pairs a curated private walkthrough of the exhibition with a five-course tasting menu served by Lastra and the KOL team at Tate Modern’s skyline restaurant. It is part dinner, part museum encounter, part argument that food can enter the serious conversation around art.
Lastra is a good choice for that test. At KOL, his Michelin-starred Marylebone restaurant, he has built a cuisine that works through Mexican technique, memory, and structure while using the British landscape as its raw material. Michelin lists KOL as a one-star restaurant in the 2026 UK guide, and Tate has already announced a broader Santiago Lastra collaboration around the Frida exhibition, including a companion menu at Tate Modern Restaurant from 25 June to 31 August 2026.
At the one-night dinner, guests will begin with a KOL Margarita and warm broth, followed by a sequence that feels like Lastra in full event mode: short rib and truffle quesadilla, scallop and tomato ceviche, and a caviar and langoustine taco, served with La Cigala, KOL’s sparkling cocktail. There will be some theatre here, clearly, with the highlight of the evening - the main course: koji mole with dry-aged duck, paired with mezcal.
Mole can be a risky territory because it is so often borrowed badly. Outside Mexico, it can become shorthand for depth: dark, glossy, “complex”, and left there. Lastra, born and raised in Mexico, works from within the culture rather than towards it, and at KOL he has built a language for carrying Mexican technique through British ingredients without turning either side into costume. His koji mole with dry-aged duck suggests that kind of translation: rooted, contemporary, and alive to the fact that mole is celebration, labour, region, family, technique, patience, and argument in sauce form.
The dessert is the most direct nod to Kahlo. The menu closes with crisp buñuelos and a trio of sorbets inspired by Viva la Vida, Kahlo’s final painting: sorrel, Greek yoghurt, and strawberry, finished with chamomile oil and intended to recreate the flavour of watermelon. Painted in 1954, shortly before her death, Viva la Vida is often read as Kahlo’s last bright act of refusal: red fruit, black seeds, green rind, and a title that turns pain into declaration. Lastra’s line on the dish is simple and better for it: biting into watermelon is “like biting into life.”
Before dinner, guests will enter the Frida: The Making of an Icon curated tour, featuring works by around 80 artists across five generations, alongside more than 200 commercial objects. The exhibition promises to move beyond the familiar Frida shorthand: flowers, brows, pain, colour, cult. Its subject is transformation: Kahlo as an artist, intellectual, political figure, wife, patient, performer of selfhood, and, eventually, a worldwide cultural phenomenon. Tate's own materials position the show as an exploration of how Kahlo became a global icon, including the commercial afterlife that turned her image into one of the most reproduced faces in modern culture.
The dinner seeks to go beyond the usual art-and-food pairing and asks whether an evening centred on Kahlo can acknowledge the tension between intimacy and popularity. Kahlo’s work was personal but never small. Her body was political territory. Her image was carefully constructed, then later consumed by the world with astonishing appetite. Kahlo has become one of those artists people approach with too much certainty. Everyone thinks they know her. The revolutionary, the sufferer, the feminist, the wife of Diego Rivera, the fashion image, the poster, the saint of resilience, the brand. The best thing to do this evening is to resist making her neat. During this special evening, the promise is to sit with the force of her image, the intelligence behind it, the appetite around it, and the strange afterlife of an artist who became universal without ever becoming simple.
Tickets are limited and priced at £350 per person. A bespoke wine pairing will be available on the night, alongside cocktail and mezcal pairings. A limited number of tickets go on pre-sale to KOL newsletter subscribers on Monday, 18 May at 12pm, with reservations powered by SevenRooms. Tate Members receive priority access to selected events, free exhibition entry, and benefits across Tate’s shops, restaurants, and bars.
For those who do not secure a seat, Lastra’s Frida-inspired companion menu will also be served at Tate Modern Restaurant from 25 June to 31 August 2026, priced at £41 for two courses or £66 with an exhibition ticket.
Practicalities
- Location: Tate Modern, Bankside, LondonTate Modern, Bankside, London
- Bookings: KOL Website