In 1997, Pipilotti Rist presented Ever is Over All at the 47th Venice Biennale. The video installation earned her international recognition and acclaim, becoming a landmark in the history of late 20th century video art. The piece built upon her early 1980s audiovisual works, drawing inspiration from music, film, pop culture, emerging media technologies and video art. It was created at a time when video was becoming firmly established as an art medium in its own right within museums, bringing together many aesthetic, political, social, environmental and sensory concerns that have come to define Rist’s practice. A new exhibition at Guggenheim Bilbao returns to this 30-year-old piece, placing it within the context of on the Swiss artist’s influence on the contemporary art landscape in the decades since it first emerged.
Rooted in the context of 1990s video art, an era marked by the rise of immersive audiovisual installations and the growing convergence of contemporary art and popular visual culture, the work departs from the austere, analytical tone of earlier Conceptual Art. Here, Risk embraces an aesthetic of colour, music and sensuality that is reminiscent of music videos and advertising. The line between art and everyday life becomes blurred. The work’s large scale and immersive nature, together with an evocative soundtrack that shifts between the enigmatic and the melancholic, give the work a tremendous visual and conceptual power. Its political and moral implications – including its reflections on the relationship between power structures, the female body, private property and collective space – also make it strikingly relevant today.
Ever is Over All consists of two synchronised video projects. One shows a young woman, played by Silvana Ceschi, walking calmly down a street in Zurich in a delicate blue dress. In one hand, she carries a large red subtropical flower – a Red Hot Poker, native to sub-Saharan Africa – which she uses to smash the windows of cars parked along the curb, one after another. This repeated act of violence, carried out slowly and openly, contrasts sharply with the gentleness of her movements and the video’s lyrical, soothing atmosphere. The second projection features close-ups of flowers, filmed with fluid, dynamic camera movements and rendered in intensely saturated colours, creating an almost hypnotic visual experience.
One of the video’s most significant moments occurs when the protagonist crosses paths with a police officer who, rather than reprimanding her, greets her warmly. This encounter momentarily suspends the established legal and social order, overturning the expectation of punishment and transforming the act of vandalism into a kind of emancipatory fantasy. Meanwhile, flowers also play a central symbolic role. Traditionally associated with beauty, fragility and decorative, it transforms here into an unexpected instrument of action. Yet rather than seeming purely destructive, the gesture takes on a cathartic quality. This shift in meaning gives the work an intrinsically feminist dimension, while also opening it to broader reflections on power, private property, public space and environmental questions.
The video’s intensely saturated colours, the leisurely pace of the editing and the dreamy musical soundtrack create an atmosphere that tempers the perceived violence. The result is a compelling tension between reason and emotion, prompting viewers to reflect on what we perceive as aggression, on the cultural forces that shape our understanding of public space and on whether the infrastructure built around cars may itself embody forms of violence that often pass unnoticed. The exhibition is a powerful return to this influential work, recentring it in conversations around today’s cultural landscape.
Pipilotti Rist. Ever is Over All is at Guggenheim Bilbao from 1 October – 17 January: guggenheim-bilbao.eus
Words: Emma Jacob
Image Credits:
1&5. III Still 17 (flowers) Pipilotti Rist – Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth, Luhring Augustine and videoart.
2. III Still 17 (smash) Pipilotti Rist – Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth, Luhring Augustine and videoart.
3. III Still 4 (flowers) Pipilotti Rist – Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth, Luhring Augustine and videoart.
4. III Still 5 (smash) Pipilotti Rist – Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth, Luhring Augustine and videoart.
