Mary Lincoln & Frida Kahlo: UNFRAMED

In this new exhibition, American artist John Ransom Phillips brings together two extraordinary figures — Mary Lincoln and Frida Kahlo — in a dialogue across time, geography, and experience. Though separated by century and culture, both women confronted lives marked by love, loss, illness, and public scrutiny. Their stories, reimagined through Phillips’ expressive artworks, reveal the shared struggle between visibility and vulnerability, and the search for selfhood beyond history’s frame.

Phillips has exhibited in the United States, Europe, Asia and Latin America, with works held in public and private collections. His multidisciplinary practice spans painting, film, theatre, and literature, exploring the private depths of public lives.

A companion piece to the exhibition, Phillips’ play Mrs. President — which dramatizes the inner life of Mary Lincoln — is being staged at Charing Cross Theatre, London, January 23 – March 8, 2026. Together, the exhibition and play form an immersive dialogue between painting and performance, reframing historical memory through a contemporary lens.

Mary Lincoln & Frida Kahlo UNFRAMED offers audiences a rare opportunity to experience this vision across both live performance and visual art, ultimately inviting us not only to see Mary and Frida anew, but to consider how we, too, might step beyond the frames that have defined us.