The pleasure of walking inside Frida Kahlo's 'Diary', in Maloka

One of the experiences that the visitor to the 'Life and Work of Frida Kahlo' exhibition, which is presented at the Maloka center in Bogotá, is to learn revealing facts about her life, based on the personal diary of the Mexican painter . A small notebook that the artist wrote for the last ten years of her life, which remained under lock and key for decades.

This is a different opportunity to the traditional museum visits of her work, which offers an immersive experience into the life of the famous plastic artist, through "multi-rooms", with state-of-the-art technology.

Its organizers, Acciona Cultura -a Spanish company that creates, produces and promotes global culture and sustainable creativity-, explain that once the viewer enters the rooms, they will have not only visual but "multisensory" stimulation through sound and color.

To this end, the exhibition has an original soundtrack created by the Spanish musician Arturo Cardelus, nominated for the Goya Awards, who travels through a script based on Kahlo's diaries. In addition, several of the narrations that the visitor will hear were entrusted to specialized actors, who accompany the 3D digital animation proposal.

“It is an opportunity to get to know a Frida beyond her romance with Diego Rivera. This exhibition represents a portrait of Frida, as a woman, painter and icon”, explain its organizers.

The newspaper
Undoubtedly, the newspaper is the central protagonist of the exhibition, an ideal space also for lovers of selfies with mobile phones.

To structure this exhibition, the team of researchers and producers traveled several times to the Casa Azul museum in Mexico, where the newspaper rests, to consult it with the help of local experts.

They say that this historical document was always kept in a hidden place, in one of the bathrooms of today's museum, by indications of Diego Rivera himself.

“When we start to investigate Frida and think about how we want to tell her story, we know that the script must be structured based on what the newspaper tells, as a resource to approach another facet of the artist, and as a document of inspiration and veracity of what she lived. The beauty of this is that this diary was never written for publication. It was written in a very personal way, which allows us to know Frida from inside her and her thoughts, ”the organizers note.

In this context, it is important to understand that it was written during the last years of the artist's life, the researchers explain, "a moment when she was no longer in her best times."

Once they had a general look at the newspaper, they then chose the pages and phrases that would help advance the visual history of the show. Like that famous Frida who says: "Why do I want legs if I have wings to fly".

"We not only use it at a narrative level, but also at a visual level, since we found many drawings and traces of Frida: strange characters, animals, crocodiles, pyramids, suns, which we use in the three-dimensional animation," the creators note.

They say that the newspaper also includes some interesting analyzes on color theory and the way in which these were related to the plastic artist and her work.
Frida Kahlo was born in Coyoacán (Mexico) on July 6, 1907 and died in that same city on July 13, 1954.