Frida Kahlo, The Immersive Biography has arrived in Brooklyn. The immersive biographical exhibition is a collaboration between the Frida Kahlo Corporation and Layers of Reality, a Spanish digital art center. Spread across seven distinct transformative spaces, it includes an award-winning VR experience that allows visitors to immerse themselves in the life and work of the Mexican artist, who continues to inspire and be more relevant in the 21st century than ever before.
The exhibition, also titled Frida Kahlo, The Life of an Icon, shows how the artist’s aesthetic continues to influence everything from fashion to feminism to inclusion. Over the years her look has inspired designers such as Jean Paul Gaultier, Dolce & Gabbana and Ricardo Tisci of Givenchy. With her bold eyebrows, she not only challenged the beauty norms of her time, which are still slowly being broken down today, but she also literally wore her pride in her Mexican roots on her sleeve: she wore the traditional Tehuana dress when she met the Rockefellers and Henry Ford in New York or exhibited her art with Picasso and Marcel Duchamp in Paris. The extravagant, charming and patriotic look was completed with a high topknot accented with a flower garland and dangling earrings. The exhibition features contemporary examples of Kahlo’s signature full skirts and embroidered blouses designed by the matriarchal society of Oaxaca on the Tehuantepec Isthmus.
Kahlo’s colorful layers and bright textiles served not only as a means of creative self-expression, but also to hide the serious injuries she sustained in a tram accident at age 18, which left her with 20 broken bones, many of them to the spine. The jewellery, the flowers and the statement lips were meant to draw the eye upwards, to her face. Under her clothes she wore suspenders, shoes with a reinforced sole and, in later years, a prosthetic leg. But as her body deteriorated, her artistic output increased, although she often had to work in the confines of her bed.
The exhibition, which is a combination of digital art, historical photographs, projections and installations, allows visitors to walk through it or, in some cases, spin in circles to take in the ever-changing images that hang on the walls be projected. The emblems of Kahlo’s creative world are conveyed most vividly through a VR experience exclusive to those who have purchased VIP tickets, which takes guests on an exhilarating journey down the grimy main street of a Mexican city, lit by vintage Technicolor cars as flowers spin and watermelon slices swim past your nose, hummingbirds flutter among tropical flora and fauna, and the magnolia, pear cactus blossom and other elements from Kahlo’s beloved skull and fruit garden dance.
Primo Entertainment and Loud And Live have partnered to bring the show to Brooklyn following its success in North America and Europe. New York is the fifth US city to host Frida Kahlo, The Immersive Biography. The exhibition will continue to tour the country before moving on to Latin America later this year.
“Frida Kahlo, The Immersive Biography” is designed as a 90-minute walking tour and has been on show since October 27 at Brooklyn’s Immersive Pavilion at 261 Water Street.
This article originally appeared on FashionUnited.uk. Translated and edited by Simone Preuss.