Immersive Exhibitions: A success?
Gracie Moore, Arts and Lit editor, discusses her experience of an immersive exhibition.
The rise of immersive exhibitions can largely be accredited to the isolation we experienced during the pandemic. Many avid exhibition-goers (notably myself) wanted to be closer to art than ever before and the interactive nature made it feel much more engaging and accessible.
In August 2022, I was lucky enough to attend an immersive exhibition in East London concerning the lives and art-based genius of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, two iconic Mexican artists of the twentieth century. As a student of Spanish and incidentally, Hispanic culture, I was extremely excited to be able to explore my favourite artists further.
For me, the classic Mexican music and speech mimicking Frida and Diego and their interactions was a nice accompaniment to my walk around the various, colour-themed rooms. Rather than walking around in silence, this exhibition offered more of an entertainment factor. Similar to the Vincent Van Gogh museum, one of the rooms contained walls, a ceiling and a floor made up of images and moving pictures while a narrator explored Frida’s life and inspiration for her art. Being given the opportunity to sit on beanbags with other people and soak up the atmosphere gave it more of a relaxed and sensory vibe which allowed me to take more in.
Rather than walking around in silence, this exhibition offered more of an entertainment factor.
This exhibition supplemented my Creative Industries module, studied in my second year, which covered how creative industries have evolved over the last century or so. Perhaps most importantly, museums have intended to increase our interaction with other visitors as well as with the art itself. As much as this exhibition was not extremely busy, it was nice to share my love for Mexican art through the medium of physicality.
I was fortunate enough to finish with an experience in which I used a 360-degree VR headset to watch a recreation of Frida and Diego’s lives as a married couple and how they grew as artists before and during the Mexican Revolution. I had never used a VR headset before so it was a new opportunity for me to become even more immersed with the artists.
I would absolutely recommend immersive exhibitions. Especially to those who don’t typically enjoy them but want to get into them. It doesn’t feel so much like a chore and is more mentally stimulating. It is excellent for museums and galleries to increase their footfall and revenue once again post-COVID as it’s not something that can easily be replicated for us at home.
