Journal May 2026 Release_Full Edition - Flipbook - Page 39
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Big Heartedness, Be My Neighbor
Pipilotti Rist, 2021
Installation, The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA
Pipilotti Rist (1962 - ) is a Swiss multimedia installation artist who invites visitors
to engage in interactive experiences. Similar to Kusama’s Infinity Mirrored Room,
the viewer becomes part of a unique, aesthetic universe. Here, through Rist’s use
of diverse spaces, projections on every surface, radiant colors, and sound, we are
transformed into nomadic travelers. I was fortunate to visit Pipilotti Rist’s MOCA
exhibit in 2021. Rist challenges our conventional views of boundaries, including
the distinction between being awake and dreaming. Rather than passive
spectators, we become part of an immersive environment that blurs the lines
between inside and outside, self and other.
We are not alone as spectators of Rist’s work, but wander through shared
communal spaces. Rist states, “My goal is welcoming guests with their whole
physical presence … they are in a way the actors when they come into the rooms
and we are only preparing a stage. I try to melt in and work with … video, light,
sound and make it a full journey” (2016, para. 6). Rist’s themes of water, light,
liberation, and the body help convey our sense of embodying multilayered, fluid
surroundings. In Kusama’s Infinity Mirrored Room, we stand on a platform inside a
mirrored enclosure. In Rist’s installation, we voyage without a plan, moving
through disparate spaces and encounters as we participate in the decentered
organization of Rist’s various assemblages.
Breaking the Frame: Aesthetic Encounters with Narrative Practice – Part Three
Journal of Contemporary Narrative Therapy, May 2026 Release, p. 25-51.
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