The long-awaited immersive exhibition “Life and Work of Frida Kahlo” is the second to land in Buenos Aires, the previous one had been that of Van Gogh, and it premiered today at the Buenos Aires Convention Center (CEC) and will be available until the end of March .
Filo.News had exclusive access to an interview with the creative director of the work, Spanish museologist Carla Prat, who highlighted that “Life and Work of Frida Kahlo” is a “reinterpretation of Frida’s work, with great respect”.
“This exhibition seeks to give Frida a new voice and who better than herself to narrate her work. So for the work we focused a lot on the writings in the diary and on her letters because it is the basis of her own narrative. We appropriated her history”, explained Carla Prat, who in turn stressed that the work also has “a message of resilience”, based on the artist’s personal history, due to her physical and emotional traumas, but “she was a person with a desire to live tremendous and transmits it in his works and in his written messages as well as in life, to such an extent that his latest work is signed with ‘viva la vida'”.
As Prat explained, a script was created for the work with two expert curators in Frida Kahlo, which allowed them academic rigor behind the narrative itself and an “ideal” selection of the works was also made. From there, we worked with the institutions that have these works, including MALBA, the Museum of Fine Arts of Mexico, the Frida Kahlo House Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Art.
The director explained that this immersive work, which offers an artistic reinterpretation of Frida’s pictorial work, is segmented and the visitor is invited to “discover” Frida until the moment they enter the immersive room.
The first room presents the diary, with images of it and begins to discover a Frida “beyond painting, as a writer”. And since the Mexican woman also had a “color theory”, of linking it with emotions, during this first part colors are also put into play so that the visitor thinks about them emotionally. “The exhibition is very emotional, it reaches you,” said Prat, who at all times referred to the work of Frida Kahlo with great passion.
The second part introduces its most intimate facet, it allows the visitor to know “what inspires Frida”. She is inspired by Mexico, the Kahlo family, her father as a photographer. In this segment, the viewer knows “how Frida defines herself: as a woman, daughter, or malinche, which means ‘the bad guy in the movie’ in Mexico,” Prat said, noting that “she really likes that she defines herself as a malinche.” At this time, it is also known how Frida Kahlo came to pictorial art, from an accident, the bus in which she was traveling was run over by a tram and that accident prostrated her for months and also brought future consequences.
In the third part, before the immersive room, he recreates the Casa Azul, the home where Frida Kahlo was born, lived, painted and died, with many images together with Diego Rivera. And then you enter the immersive room where the audiovisual that lasts about 40 minutes.
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In the immersive room it is audiovisual, “almost like a movie”. It begins with a triumphant Frida, who rubs shoulders with the avant-garde of the time, where Picasso himself speaks of her. It has testimonies from her contemporaries to convey to the public the relevance of the painter in the intellectual and artistic environment of her time.
Then the pictorial work stands out for the way in which the artist paints, she focuses on her family that was Euro-American, her father was Jewish and her mother Mexican, and is very present in her work as well as her great love, Diego Rivera, whom he mentions as his “second big accident”, which “starts off very lovingly and reaches an uncomfortable point”, reviewed Prat, at the same time that he stressed that the soundtrack accompanies these ups and downs very well.
And the third part is linked in the Blue House and his paintings there. Due to mobility issues, Frida could not move much and in her work she ends up replicating her daily life. Her family, Diego, herself, her deer, the birds, the plants, the fruits.
“Viva la vida”, is the message of resilience that the work highlights and what the immersive exhibition “Life and Work of Frida Kahlo” transmits, which was launched today in Buenos Aires and will be available until March every Tuesday and Wednesday from 16 to 9 p.m., and from Thursday to Sunday from 2 p.m. to 9 p.m. Tickets can be purchased at fridaexpoar.com/
What is an immersive work?
Immersive art allows the viewer to become immersed in the artwork. In this way, he not only observes the work, but becomes part of it. One of the ruptures of immersive art is that it allows other senses to be brought into play in the work, and not just sight.
