There was only one thing I wanted to do on my last day in Montreal. And that was to go see the Frida Kahlo, The Life of an Icon exhibition at Arsenal Contemporary Art Montreal.
The exhibition had its North American premiere on June 10 and Montreal is the only Canadian stop where you can experience it. After Montreal, it’ll tour the US before heading to Latin America.
It is billed as an “immersive biography”, so don’t expect to see any of Frida Kahlo’s artwork. There aren’t any. Instead visitors will explore the key moments (her struggles, passions, and inspirations) in Kahlo’s life that shaped her into becoming one of the most influential artists in history of modern art.
The Frida Kahlo exhibition features:
- 7 transformational spaces
- 360º video projections
- Virtual Reality
- Artistic installations
- Archival photographs + collector items
- Participatory elements for visitors
When you first enter the exhibition, you’re greeted with a Día de los Muertos altar dedicated to Frida Kahlo. Orange marigold flowers, candles, pan de muertos, fruits, bottles of tequila, figurines, framed photos, potted plants, and sugar skulls decorated the table. A large image of Kahlo presided over the altar.
Visitors would then be funnelled into a long hallway where they could get quick overview of the major events that happened to Kahlo. Transformative events that help give additional context to the symbolism behind her art.
July 6, 1907 – Frida Kahlo is born in Coyoacán, daughter of a German photographer and an Oaxaca housewife. They live in the Blue House.
1913 – Kahlo contracts poliomyelitis, which leaves sequela on the right leg.
1922 – Kahlo enters the National Preparatory High School to become a doctor.
September 17, 1924 – She suffers a near-fatal bus crash that left her with life-long health problems. She starts painting during the convalescence.
1928 – Kahlo join the Mexican Communist Party and takes part in meetings, where she meets Diego Rivera, who encourages her to continue painting.
August 21, 1929 – Kahlo and Rivera marries.
November 10, 1930 – She travels to San Francisco, accompanying Rivera. They will remain there for seven months.
1932 – Kahlo and Rivera move to Detroit. She suffers an abortion (she will suffer at least three abortions during her life), which keeps her at the hospital for 13 days.
March 14, 1933 – The pair travel to New York where Rivera paints a mural on the Rockefeller building.
1938 – Kahlo achieves her first important sale to the actor Edward G. Robinson. In October, she travels to New York to organize her first solo exhibition.
1939 – She participates in the exhibition Mexique, organized by André Breton and Marcel Duchamp. The Louvre buys her painting The Frame. She signs papers to divorce Rivera.
June 1, 1940 – The Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme is inaugurated in Paris, with two paintings by Frida Kahlo.
December 8, 1940 – She makes up with Rivera, and they get married for the second time.
1946 – Kahlo travel to New York with her sister Cristina to undergo a spinal fusion. She meets Josep Bartolí, with whom she will have a relationship for three years.
April 13, 1953 – She inaugurates her first solo exhibition in Mexico. She reaches the gallery in an ambulance, and receives visitors on a bed installed in the room. Kahlo later has her right leg amputated.
July 13-14, 1954 – Frida Kahlo dies at the Blue House. The night before, she had given Rivera a ring to celebrate their silver wedding anniversary. The next day, Kahlo receives a tribute at the Palace of Fine Arts, Mexico City.
With that, we get to the first installation called “The Instant”, a tridimensional video using overlapping transparent layers for a volumetric effect. The installation itself was cool, but what it depicted was not.
Some instants change us forever. For Kahlo, that moment was the bus accident. A moment that could’ve been avoidable had she not gone back to school to look for her umbrella. As a result, she suffered a broken spinal column, a fractured clavicle, broken ribs, eleven fractures in her right leg, a crushed right foot, dislocated right shoulder, a crushed pelvis, and extensive internal damage caused by a steel handrail that pierced her left hip and came out through the vagina.
Kahlo spent a month in the hospital and many more months at home, stretched out in the same position, imprisoned by plaster of corrective corsets. Twenty eight corsets, one even made of steel, would immobilize her throughout her life.
Frida lived constantly in pain and yet, never painted the accident that changed her life.
The next gallery had a video mapping installation. A projection of Frida Kahlo in bed, a place where she created a significant part of her work. Beds and stretchers also appeared frequently in her paintings.
Six circular panels with images of a pelvis, a pair of breasts, a heart, a baby, a lotus flower, and a snail are connected by ropes to the bed. A colour bath of the panels and her writhing in pain and burning up in bed would cycle through, reflecting Kahlo’s struggle between debilitating pain and her desire to live, and become a mother.
In the next gallery was “Frida’s Universe“, a trippy and reactive installation, chock full of spinning Kahlo symbology: skulls, butterflies, hummingbird, monkeys, watermelons, pomegranates, papayas, and pineapples.
The first participatory element of the exhibit was the La Rosita space, a full replica of a Mexican canteen, where visitors can colour a portrait of Frida Kahlo, which would the be projected on the wall.
Eighty percent of Kahlo’s works are self-portraits. She said that she paints herself because it is the subject she knows best. Sharp objects such as necklaces of thorns, nails, arrows, and knives would appear in self-portraits, symbolizing Kahlo stoically living with her wounds; accepting that suffering is inseparable from living.
Since she was unable to have children, Kahlo adopted animals like monkeys and parrots, many of which shows up in her self portraits too.
The exhibit’s biggest wow was found in its largest space – a wall to wall (and floor) immersive experience that transports visitors through projections and historical photos, highlighting major moments, places and significant people that were important to her: her tumultuous marriage to Rivera, friendship with Pablo Picasso, and affair with Leon Trotsky.
My favourite projection was of a plane travelling through the sky. It really felt like you were above the clouds.
Photos were encouraged throughout the exhibit. There’s even a couple selfie stations and a photo booth A.I. set up on your way out. Everything about the exhibition was Instagram-worthy.
I get why some people may choose to skip Frida Kahlo-The Life of an Icon as there are no Frida Kahlo artwork displayed and that’s what they want to see.
At the start of the exhibition, there is a plaque on the wall asking, “We can say we know Frida Kahlo. But, do we understand her?”
If you want to learn more of the story behind this iconic artist (in a creative and visually appealing way!), or want to introduce someone not at all familiar with Frida Kahlo, or if you’re a fan of large-scale digital installations like I am, this is the exhibition for you.
I left completely wowed and was thrilled that I chose this to wrap up my first trip to Montreal.
View more photos of Frida Kahlo – The Life of An Icon on my Flickr album and IG Stories. Feel free to follow me on Instagram too! View for more Montreal pics.
Hours:
Tues-Sun. Various times
Address:
2020 Rue William, Montreal
GPS coordinates: 45.48558, -73.56849
Top photo credit: Primo Entertainment
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