Elisabeth Rist, who everyone knows as Pipilotti Rist, is a renowned artist Switzerland whose facilities light and video are fascinating because they explore the human body, femininity and nature.
She was first known in Switzerland for her video installation I'm Not the Girl Who Misses Much, from 1986, but his international leap occurred in the mid-1990s with video installations Sip My Ocean (1996) y Ever is Over All (1997).
As an artist, Rist stands out for carrying out complex, surprising and intriguing installations that combine video, light, sound and design.
It is famous for focusing on the body, as well as family and domestic themes in which he distorts and comes to appropriate new contexts in truly creative ways.
Sip My Ocean, 1996. Pipilotti Rist. Source: Guggenheim Museum
Your most recent installation Nordic Hiplights (2022) can be defined as a wonderful extension of his universe artistic.
To shape it, Pipilotti Rist decided to take an everyday element, in this case a clothesline, to later use only white underwear for both sexes and then transform it into a beautiful chain of light.
It is extremely interesting how each piece of clothing in this work functions as a kind of spotlight, so that the light it gives off is attractive enough to hypnotize viewers.
Nordic Hiplights, 2022. Pipilotti Rist. Source: Ekebergparken
By turning underwear into lamps that hang above the viewer, Rist highly elevates poetics, the meaning of underwear, which are familiar to anyone.
This piece is simply great because it takes out of the private context clothes that are usually only shown in private, so it is, to a certain extent, strange.
With Nordic Hiplights, Pipilotti Rist shamelessly and sarcastically explores an important and stigmatized part of the human body, which is the center of life and pleasure but also pain.
Underwear should not seduce or decorate, but rather be enjoyed in its practical and original state, as something functional and everyday, highlighted and elevated by the glow of the lamps on which each piece was mounted.
