‘I paint myself,’ Kahlo once said, ‘because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best.’ Of her 143 surviving paintings, 55 are self-portraits. Many of these speak of her physical and emotional suffering, the fragility of the human body, life and death.

Painted in 1940, this small but arresting painting shows Kahlo’s pain: her skin bleeds from the thorn necklace, her expression is solemn, the hummingbird is black and lifeless.

By employing symbolism and iconography from indigenous Mexican culture, Kahlo pioneered a new language of loss and pain and reframed self-portraiture for good.

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye has devoted her career to painting fictional black characters, explaining that they are ‘composites constructed from found images, life drawings and my imagination.’ They are painted in a muted palette of blacks, browns and greys, with the occasional flash of brightness, and seem to exist outside of a specific time and place.

But each has a story to tell. ‘Yiadom-Boakye’s figures push themselves into the imagination, as literary characters do,’ Zadie Smith wrote in 2017.

In Willow Strip, two women in emerald green dresses dance, their right arms interlaced. They gaze at each other admiringly: why are they celebrating? Yiadom-Boakye leaves us to decide.