Drooling over the Pipilotti Rist retrospective

Switzerland’s best known visual artist, Pipilotti Rist, shares some of her thoughts on her retrospective, ‘Your Saliva is my Diving Suit in the Ocean of Pain’. The exhibition is now at Zurich’s Kunsthaus. (SRF/swissinfo.ch)

This is not a typical retrospective. The artist has rearranged older works and added new ones to this playful show. The title, according to the Kunsthaus, is a line from an early song by the artist and Anders Guggisberg that ‘hints at an additional level of meaning to the exhibition’. 

Pipilotti Rist’s art covers a wide range of themes: sensuality and body, women’s social status, the state of the world, as well as personal memories, fears and dreams. She continues to question taboos.

Visitors to the exhibition are invited to use a map and torch to make their way through the show. There are various places where they can sit or lie down, to browse through books or meditate. In other parts they are completely surrounded by videos.

The artist made her first pieces in 1986. In the 1990s she also worked as a computer graphic designer and was a member of the band “Les Reines Prochaines”. She’s considered one of the world’s most important video artists, and has exhibited in some of the world’s most renowned museums.