MCA Chicago’s ‘Pipilotti Rist: Supersubjektiv’ Exhibition Runs from February 22-September 14, 2025

The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago’s (MCA) exhibition Pipilotti Rist: Supersubjektiv opened on February 22, 2025 and runs through September 14, 2025, in the Turner Gallery on the museum’s fourth floor. 

The exhibition focuses on a single artwork by Pipilotti Rist, the 2001 video installation Supersubjektiv. In the artwork, Rist takes digital surveillance footage she filmed during a month-long trip to Japan and morphs it into a dream-like space for contemplation and curiosity, pairing the hallucinatory video with an artist-made pillow and sheepskin seating. The artwork examines nature, the built environment, and technology with wide eyed wonder.

While viewing the large-scale, wall-to-wall video, visitors are encouraged to relax in the darkened gallery and listen to its ambient electronic soundtrack, made in collaboration with composer Anders Guggisberg and featuring the familiar sounds of a dial-up internet modem as well as lyrics written and sung by Rist.

Made at the turn of the millennium, Supersubjektiv traces Rist’s longing for connection in an increasingly digital and globalized world. Supersubjektiv is part of the D.Daskalopoulos Collection Gift, which was jointly donated to the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 2022.  The exhibition is curated by Jason Foumberg, Daskalopoulos Collection Manager. 

Pipilotti Rist (b. 1962, Grabs, Switzerland; lives in Zurich, Switzerland) used her childhood nickname, Lotti, with the first name of the Swedish children’s story character Pippi Longstocking to create her artistic moniker in 1982. She attended the Hochschule für Angewandte Kunst in Vienna from 1982 to 1986 and the Schule für Gestaltung Basel from 1986 to 1988. From 1988 to 1994, she played in a rock band called Les Reines Prochaines, at the same time developing an aesthetic language quite close to that of music videos in her art. The artist appears in many of her own videos and often sings on the soundtracks. She was a finalist for the Hugo Boss Prize in 1998.

Find more information about MCA’s exhibitions, programs, and special events at mcachicago.org or at 312.280.2660.