Calling All Kahlos

Photo by Stephan Zielinksi, courtesy René Yañez

Frida Kahlo lookalikes at the open call for René Yañez's "living tableaux"

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For two Saturdays in August, artist and independent curator René Yañez screened dozens of Frida Kahlo lookalikes as part of an open call for participants to play the storied painter in "living tableaux" on September 28, the final day of SFMOMA's exhibition devoted to the Mexican artist.

"We are looking for four to five Frida Kahlo impersonators over the age of 18 who can bring the artist to life with honor and passion," the call read. "All models should audition as Frida Kahlo and commit to taking part in a public performance."

Titled "Bringing Life to the Spirit," the project is a revival of one Yañez organized for the 1992 exhibition "Pasión por Frida" at San Francisco's Mexican Museum. For that happening, Yañez cast Frida fans in tableaux that viewers could sketch or simply enjoy. This time the response was so great, however — with more than 50 female and three male Frida hopefuls auditioning — that Yañez decided to expand the project to include live performances, creating something like an all-Frida talent show. In addition to carefully posed tableaux, the five-hour event will include singing, dance performances, monologues, dialogues, and interventions in the museum's space. All in all, 20 lookalikes will take part.

Yañez, who did the casting himself, says applicants' resemblance to the artist, also famously rendered by the Mexican actress Salma Hayek in the 2002 biopic Frida, was less important than the attitude they brought to the performance.

"It's not so much that they look like like Frida," he said. "It was the desire and passion I was looking for."

Click on the photo gallery at left to see some of the Fridas.