Pipilotti Rist’s Immersive Solo Exhibition at UCCA Beijing

From July 19 to October 19, 2025, Beijing’s UCCA Center for Contemporary Arts will present the immersive solo exhibition ‘Your Palm is My Universe’ by Swiss media art pioneer Pipilotti Rist.

As a trailblazer in the field of spatial video installations, Pipilotti Rist has gained international acclaim for her groundbreaking artistic practices over several decades. Since the mid-1980s, she has consistently pushed the boundaries between video, sculpture, installation, and performance art, creating multisensory spatial and visual works that stimulate curiosity, imagination, and emotional resonance in viewers through multimedia technology and ecological philosophy.

Curated by Yan Fang, this exhibition comprehensively presents the artist’s evolving artistic practice, which critically examines contemporary image culture while countering algorithm-driven visual experiences with a poetic alternative perspective. Rooted in feminist thought and Taoist philosophy, the exhibition showcases a more inclusive and non-anthropocentric world.

‘Your Palm is My Universe’ transforms the UCCA main exhibition hall into a miniature universe of flowing colours, where touch, perception, and expression intertwine. Visitors are invited to touch the artworks and engage with them; as light and shadow flow across the fabric surfaces, the perceptual distance between the installations and the viewers gradually blurs, making them organic components of this ‘vast body.’

The central elements of Pipilotti Rist’s artistic language: body and perception, guide the viewer’s gaze, making distorted visuals become tangible and allowing the physical presence to manifest naturally. Here, hands, feet, and faces weave through moving frames, breaking the confines of the image and inviting audiences to actively participate rather than passively observe.

As viewers immerse themselves in the illusion of being wrapped by this ‘vast body,’ projections reveal pastoral landscapes that are distorted by vibrant colour changes. These images reflect the connection between humanity and nature while also alluding to humanity’s impact on the environment. Close-up shots transform plants into expansive terrains, highlighting the interdependent relationship between living organisms and their environments. Meanwhile, the visible palm prints on the screen evoke topographical maps, as the artist skillfully connects the micro and macro, vividly interpreting the inseparable symbiotic relationship between body, space, and ecological cycles.

*About the Artist:*

Pipilotti Rist was born in 1962 in Grabus, Switzerland, and currently lives and works in Zurich. From 1982 to 1986, she studied commercial art, illustration, and photography at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, followed by a focus on audiovisual communication (video) at the Basel Academy of Art and Design. Since the mid-1980s, Rist has gradually become a significant figure in the international art scene, and her works have been exhibited widely around the world.