Come for the Instagram, stay for the art
Tobias Berger, head of art at Tai Kwun, has seen it happen recently. While Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist's ongoing Behind Your Eyelid exhibition is drawing its share of Instagrammers, a number of them seem to be staying back for a deeper engagement with the art.
"I have never seen so many good, funny, amazing comments about an exhibition at Tai Kwun before," says Berger who curated the show. "Viewers are really touched."
Rist takes immersive to the next level. She is as bewitching as she's bold, as self-deprecating as she's empathetic. There are surprises at every turn and not always pleasant ones. For example, the gateway to the show is through a curtain made of 3,000 hand-sculpted LED light crystals, twinkling with the colors of the rainbow. Called Pixel Forest, the piece seems like a perfect opening gambit — a representation of the boundary separating the audience from Rist's fantasy world. On closer inspection though, it turns out the crystals resemble female genitalia.
