An immersive biography of Frida Kahlo shows her becoming a “pop icon”

The first immersive biography focused on the life of the Mexican Frida Kahlo explores in the Ideal Center of Barcelona the conversion of the artist into a “pop icon” in an exhibition proposal that follows its trajectory through historical photographs, original films and installations.

The Ideal proposal is presented without reproductions of paintings by the artist “with the intention of taking a step further in the new immersive languages”, explained this Tuesday the director of the center, Jordi Sellas.

The innovative proposal It also includes collectors’ items and newly created music that reproduce the most important moments of his life inviting visitors to discover the incredible story that built the myth, says Sellas.

According to the director of Ideal, “Although Frida Kahlo was born at the beginning of the last century, in the XXI century the myth of Frida Kahlo is more current than ever”.

Through “A life that catches, surprises and inspires”, the visitor discovers the biography of a woman “capable of overcoming adversity thanks to her perseverance, strength, rebellion and talent, with an unrepeatable personality, ahead of her time.”

The exhibition tour begins with an installation of holograms in three dimensions, the work of Nueveojos, with a porcelain Frida that is fractured into a thousand pieces, evoking the terrible streetcar accident she suffered in 1925, which along with the legacy of childhood polio left her in constant physical pain and unable to have children.

Life and death come together in a second installation, the work of Jordi Massó, conceived as a mapping to show Frida’s imaginary from the place where she created much of her work, the bed, a work that makes constant reference to the life cycle, birth and death, health and disease.

Frida used painting as a means of expression and her suffering can be seen in many of her works.

The main installation, a 30-minute audiovisual production created by Martas Studio, which takes place on 1,000 square meters of screens, is an immersive audiovisual journey through Frida’s childhood and adolescence, her passions, motherhood and the multiple journeys that built the artist and her identity to become a global icon.

The exhibition closes with Exquisite Corpse, the work of the blit studio, which has built a 9-minute virtual reality experience that reflects both the environment and the pictorial world and the particular imaginary that made her an inimitable artist. In this case, the visitor experiences a dreamlike journey up on the bed in which Frida Kahlo was bedridden for much of her life.

The Broomx creative team recreates in the installation La Rosita the famous pulqueria in which Frida carried out her exercises as a painting teacher, encouraging her students to leave the classroom, get to know the environment and the traditions of their country and recover Mexican customs.

In this space, the little ones and adults will be able to live a technological and creative experience that adds artificial intelligence and digital art at the service of interactivity to once again decorate the walls of the mythical pulqueria with the face of the Mexican artist.

At the end of the exhibition, various dresses made by current Mexican artisans, books specialized in her painting, a Lladró figure and even a copy of a limited edition made of Barbie with the face of Frida Kahlo confirm the artist’s conversion. in a pop myth.

The Ideal proposal is based on deep scientific research that, unlike previous proposals focused exclusively on works by great artists (Monet, Gustav Klimt), aims to show “An unprecedented focus on the person, daughter, friend, wife, lover, wife and, finally, the myth that has transcended generations.”

This immersive biography of the Mexican artist, which has had its world premiere in Barcelona, ​​is a Layers of Reality production for Ideal with the support of the Artists Rights Foundation and the Frida Kahlo Corporation. (I)