A seminal work from the early stages of Pipilotti Rist’s artistic career, I’m Not the Girl Who Misses Much is rooted in a gesture of rewriting. Adapting the opening lyric from The Beatles’ Happiness Is a Warm Gun—“She’s not a girl who misses much”—Rist replaces “she” with “I,” shifting the female figure from a third-person object of description into a subject of self-expression.

Created during her student years, the work foreshadows many of the strategies that would come to define Pipilotti Rist’s practice. By manipulating the speed of both sound and image, she produces effects of blurring, distortion, and visual malfunction. On screen, her exaggerated makeup, revealing costume, and puppet-like movements serve as a parody and critique of the ways women were often objectified in popular media of the time—particularly in television and music videos—calling attention to the narrow and reductive modes of female representation.

 [Absolutions] Pipilotti's Mistakes /《（免罪）皮皮乐迪的过错》/ 1988 / 11'00" 

Pipilotti Rist juxtaposes footage of herself collapsing to the ground with a stream of images resembling electromagnetic interference, using the visual “failures” of video technology to convey psychological missteps and the inherent imperfections of individual experience.

The work is composed of six segments, some accompanied by Lost in Space performed by Hans Feigenwinter, others featuring songs by Les Reines Prochaines—the feminist band of which Pipilotti Rist was part of. Additional sound elements were composed by the artist herself.

You Called Me Jacky /《你曾叫我杰基》/ 1990 / 4'02" 

In You Called Me Jacky, Pipilotti Rist humorously explores questions of gender identity by lip-syncing to Jackie and Edna, a 1970s track by British singer-songwriter Kevin Coyne playfully embodying the male voice through performance.

 I’m a Victim of This Song / 《我是这首歌的受害者》/ 1995 / 5'09"

I'm a Victim of This Song features the saturated colors and collage-style editing typical of music videos. Pipilotti Rist’s own vocal performance—layered with piercing background screams—forms an unexpected counterpoint to the gentle guitar and bass accompaniment, as well as a murmuring male backing vocal, together creating a harmony that is both tender and emotionally charged. Filmed in one of the artist’s favorite cafés, the video shifts between scenes of casual everyday life and fast-moving clouds—contrasting the mundanity of the interior with the fleeting nature of memory and emotion. 

In this work, Pipilotti Rist reinterprets Wicked Game by Chris Isaak. While the original lyrics evoke themes of seduction, loss of control, and the inescapability of love, Rist imbues her version with a sense of resistance and refusal, transforming “victimhood” into a moment of self-awareness and awakening.

Pipilotti Rist (b. 1962, Grabs, Switzerland; lives and works in Zurich) studied commercial art, illustration, and photography at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna from 1982 to 1986. She furthered her studies with audio visual communications (video) at the School of Design in Basel. Since the mid-1980s, Rist has been exhibiting her work worldwide and became a central figure within the international art scene.

Rist’s recent solo exhibitions include “Electric Idyll” (Fire Station, Doha, 2024); “Behind Your Eyelid” (Tai Kwun, Hong Kong, 2022); “Big Heartedness, Be My Neighbor” (The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Los Angeles, California, 2021-2022); “Your Eye Is My Island” (The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan, 2021); “Open My Glade” (Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark, 2019); “Pixel Forest” (LUMA Arles, Arles, France, 2018); “Sip my Ocean” (Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, 2017-2018); “Pixel Forest and Worry Will Vanish” (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2017); “Pixel Forest” (New Museum, New York, 2016-2017); and “Your Saliva is my Diving Suit in the Ocean of Pain” (Kunsthaus Zurich, Zurich, 2016).

CFG-BARCO