ReviewVisual artist’s surreal exhibition at Hong Kong’s Tai Kwun centre is a multisensory experience for visitors to lose themselves in

Pipilotti Rist’s ‘Behind Your Eyelid’ show transforms the former police compound with captivating works that walk a fine line between comical and critical

Tickets for the main show at the JC Contemporary building cost between HK$65 and HK$95, but her other works placed across Tai Kwun are free to view

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A video projection at “The Apartment” installation, part of the “Behind Your Eyelid” exhibition by visual artist Pipilotti Rist, at JC Contemporary in Tai Kwun, Hong Kong. Photo: Jonathan Wong

Published: 5:15pm, 12 Aug 2022

Hong Kong needs a break, and Pipilotti Rist is providing it.

The Swiss visual artist’s exuberant solo exhibition “Behind Your Eyelid”, meticulously put together with curator Tobias Berger at Hong Kong’s Tai Kwun heritage and arts centre, is a kaleidoscopic, multisensory and playful experience that begins with visitors confronted by rows of staring eyeballs in the entrance lobby of the JC Contemporary building.

These mischievous mementos are in fact plastic balls containing cleaning cloths for glasses, a real and figurative aid to a clear-eyed view of the world.

Rist describes Tai Kwun, a former police station and prison compound, as a historical site of “almost unbearable heaviness” that she has attempted to lighten and transform as much as possible.

“Water Tiger Colour Balm” (2022), an outdoor video installation by Rist in Tai Kwun’s Prison Yard. Photo: Tai Kwun Contemporary

All the windows are accessorised with either slabs of clear recycled packaging (a participatory work called The Innocent Collection), textile collages that Rist designed with her sister, or else tinted in pink, blue, yellow and green.