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Move over Van Gogh, it's Frida's turn to ride Dallas' immersive art wave

Multiple self portraits from Frida Kahlo projected on the walls of a large empty room.
Miguel Perez
/
KERA News
"Immersive Frida Kahlo" incorporates iconic imagery from the Mexican painter's work to tell the story of her life.

The Mexican painter and cultural icon gets the 360-degree projection treatment in the new "Immersive Frida Kahlo" show

Iconic imagery from Frida Kahlo’s work dances on the walls of the Lighthouse Artspace venue in Dallas: colorful huipil tunics, white Tehuana headresses, and wide-eyed spider monkeys abound.

The new 360-degree projection show is the follow-up to the popular Immersive Van Gogh Exhibit from producers Lighthouse Immersive and Impact Museums. The Van Gogh show has sold 4.5 million tickets in North America so far.

Operations manager Dana Volkmar says the approach for Frida is different.

“Van Gogh was more about the beauty of his work,” she said. “With Frida, you get more of an understanding of who she was as an entire human, instead of just her as the artist. What the creators tried to do in this instance was incorporate things that were symbolic of her life and the greatness she achieved while she was here.”

Volkmar said the show, which features 500,000 cubic feet of moving images, aims to connect different elements of the famed Mexican painter’s life and how those elements manifested themselves in her art.

“It reaches audiences that typically wouldn’t go stand at a museum and look at a piece of art on the wall,” Volkmar said.

Frida is a proven draw in North Texas. The Dallas Museum of Art’s 2017 exhibition Mexico: 1900 – 1950 heavily featured Kahlo’s work, and it became one of the most attended shows at the DMA in the past decade.

Tickets to Immersive Frida Kahlo range from $25 to $70. The show will be at the Lighthouse Artspace in downtown Dallas through April 17. Masks are required and there are floor markers throughout the venue to help guests stay socially distant.

Got a tip? Email Miguel Perez at mperez@kera.org. You can follow him on Twitter @quillindie.

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Miguel Perez is an assistant producer at KERA. He produces local content for Morning Edition and KERA News. He also produces The Friday Conversation, a weekly interview series with North Texas newsmakers.