AI-Generated Ad Campaign For Les Énervés Features Frida Kahlo Driving A Bus

(MENAFN- USA Art News) A new artificial intelligence-generated advertising campaign by fashion brand Les Énervés depicts a virtual version of Frida Kahlo driving a bus, an image drawing criticism for distorting the artist's history. The ad, which first appeared on Instagram in October and gained wider traction on X this month, shows an AI-reimagined Kahlo chewing bubblegum and recklessly operating a bus through Paris.

Passengers in the controversial ad include an AI-generated Mona Lisa and Vincent van Gogh, whose severed ear is replaced with a steel prosthetic. The depiction also shows the AI Kahlo consuming multiple drinks before driving, despite the real artist's known struggles with alcohol and drug addiction. In the ad, Kahlo states,“It's Frida, bitch,” before the soundtrack transitions from an Édith Piaf song to Britney Spears's“Gimme More.”

According to a release from Les Énervés, a brand with origins in Paris and Bali, the ad was directed by its founder, Wakim Krari. The company states it was produced using“AI, and a lot of patience.” The brand's website further explains that AI was used to recreate Kahlo's bus as a Renault TN, a model that might have been seen in Paris during Kahlo's 1939 exhibition there.

Les Énervés has framed the campaign as an act of artistic reclamation. The brand stated,“A hundred years later, she is the one driving. Vincent and Mona Lisa are in the back. Nothing is going to hit her this time.” However, this interpretation is not universally shared. One post on X, which garnered 46,000 likes, characterized the ad as“disrespecting the dead.”

This campaign is not the first instance of AI-generated content featuring Kahlo that has sparked controversy. Another AI-created video circulating on TikTok and X shows Kahlo as a Spice Girl, performing “Wannabe” alongside the Mona Lisa, Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring model, and the woman from Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Wedding. Additionally, several Kahlo chatbots are available online, one of which prompts users to“Ask me about my struggles with physical pain, my relationship with Diego Rivera, or my feminist beliefs.”

Critics argue that manipulating Kahlo's image with AI is particularly problematic given how meticulously she crafted her self-image to defy societal expectations for 20th-century Mexican women. Her self-portraits often featured a prominent unibrow, facial hair, and men's clothing, challenging gender norms. She also famously wore Tehuana skirts, highlighting Indigenous Zapotec culture as integral to Mexican identity. The Les Énervés ad includes her unibrow, with the brand noting,“The woman who has too much of it gives some to the woman who has none,” as Kahlo draws it onto the Mona Lisa.

Mari Carmen Ramírez, curator of the exhibition “Frida: The Making of an Icon,” currently on view at Tate Modern in London, has observed that Kahlo's image has become“subsumed” by various artists and activists, with both positive and negative consequences. While the commercialization of Kahlo's image is a concern, the broader issue raised by this AI content is its potential to distort and disregard art history. For example, the Les Énervés ad positions Kahlo at the center of art history, sidelining her husband, artist Diego Rivera, who is depicted trying to keep pace with her as she walks down a rainy street. Their 25-year relationship was complex, marked by Kahlo's deep love and frustration with Rivera, who had an affair with her younger sister. This depiction is seen as an oversimplification, especially since Kahlo, who died in 1954 at 47, is no longer alive to comment. Les Énervés has hinted at future AI projects, stating on its website,“The next chapter is coming soon, with a new muse and new things hidden in the frame.”

Source: ARTnews

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