M+ announces Hand Me Your Trust, new M+ Facade commission by spatial video art pioneer Pipilotti Rist, supported by Art Basel and UBS

M+, Asia’s first global museum of contemporary visual culture in the West Kowloon Cultural District in Hong Kong, is delighted to announce a brand-new work Hand Me Your Trust by Swiss spatial video art pioneer Pipilotti Rist. Commissioned by M+ and supported by Art Basel and UBS, the work will be shown on the M+ Facade daily from 7 to 9pm from 18 March to 21 May 2023 and every Saturday and Sunday from 7 to 9pm from 22 May to 17 June 2023.

Hand Me Your Trust is a site-specific moving image work created specifically for the M+ Facade, set within the undulating architectures of Hong Kong’s world-famous skyline along the Victoria Harbour. Presented in the hustle and bustle of a city with millions of inhabitants, the work incorporates Rist’s typically vivid colour palettes and freeform camera work, echoing the dynamic shifts of scale of Hong Kong’s urban landscape.

Rist approaches the concept of the hand from a variety of scales, mirroring the dynamics of the city itself from an intimate human scale, to one that is the size of a building. As the hands weave and chart a path around various objects at varying velocities, Rist takes on not only Hong Kong’s design and architecture heritage, but also the individual hands that sculpted, placed, and forged these ubiquitous forms into being. Hand Me Your Trust is an energetic celebration of the many people who played a part in building the city and our world with their hands. It explores the multitude of dynamic motions that weave and turn like the traffic encountered in our day-to-day lives. Hands can be seen as extensions of our emotional states and enablers of our creative impulses. They are also mediums for the poetry of pure motion. Hands are beautiful objects in themselves.

Rist’s sensuous video art turns one of the largest media screens in the world, M+ Facade, into an intimate introspection on the power of human touch, reconceptualising our everyday movements and manoeuvres into kaleidoscopic tactile images. In Rist’s words, ‘my work looks at hands not only as working and creating, but also ornamentally: our hands can be beautiful extensions of our emotions, to communicate with other living beings without words.’ Hand Me Your Trust emerges as a cordial gesture to audiences in Hong Kong — an invitation to embrace and appreciate each unexpected encounter, every minute interaction and the small achievements in our everyday lives. The collective contributions of our personal touch can together build cities, communities, and vibrant histories.

Suhanya Raffel, Museum Director, M+, emphasizes the importance of M+’s continued collaboration with Art Basel. ‘I am truly excited for M+ to further strengthen our partnership with Art Basel this year by presenting a fascinating new moving image work by Pipilotti Rist on the M+ Facade. In light of Hong Kong’s long-awaited reopening to the Mainland and the rest of the world, this spectacular commission allows us to extend our welcoming hands to new audiences from around the world, reinforcing Hong Kong’s status as an international cultural hub by spotlighting the imaginative possibilities of contemporary visual culture.’

Angelle Siyang-Le, Director, Art Basel Hong Kong, says, ‘We are delighted to collaborate with M+ once again this year to premiere Pipilotti Rist's extraordinary video installation, and truly excited to be able to share this captivating work with local audiences and international visitors returning to the city for the first time since its reopening. More than ever before, the Hong Kong Arts Month this March will showcase the incredible vibrancy of the city's art scene—from its world-class cultural institutions to leading galleries and artist-run spaces—reaffirming its position as a cultural crossroads in the heart of Asia.’

Doryun Chong, Deputy Director, Curatorial and Chief Curator, M+, highlights Rist’s prominence as a longstanding central figure within the international video art scene. ‘Rist is globally recognised as a trailblazer in experimental video and instillation art, with her work characterised by a surreal, fantastical, and colourful visual language. Her practice continues to reflect on our ever-evolving relationships with the constructed world around us, examining the intricate interplay between human vulnerability and strength through emerging technologies.’

Pauline J. Yao, Lead Curator, Visual Art, M+ and Sunny Cheung, Curator, Design and Architecture, M+, say, ‘Hand Me Your Trust is enchanting, striking yet delicate and sensitive. From the way we caress, draw, and sign, down to our fingerprint, which acts as our own personal signature, Rist ponders the importance of the hand, as not only a practical and versatile tool that does our bidding, but one that is innately inscribed with our own unique, personal character.’

Pipilotti Rist shares her excitement for the new commission’s premiere in Hong Kong. ‘I was drawn to the M+ Facade due to its tremendous size, quality, and form, as an extraordinary platform to communicate and connect with a diverse audience in Hong Kong and beyond. I hope that the images and philosophies presented in Hand Me Your Trust may leap off the Facade and extend far beyond in its impact, empowering audiences to recognise the immense power, tenderness and potential contained within their two hands.’

For the latest information on the commission, please visit www.mplus.org.hk.

Remarks

Art Basel Hong Kong 2023

Private View (by invitation only)
Tuesday, March 21, 12 noon to 8pm
Wednesday, March 22, 12 noon to 5pm
Thursday, March 23, 12 noon to 2pm
Friday, March 24, 12 noon to 2pm
Saturday, March 25, 11am to 12 noon

Vernissage
Wednesday, March 22, 5pm to 9pm

Show Hours
Thursday, March 23, 2pm to 8pm
Friday, March 24, 2pm to 8pm
Saturday, March 25, 12 noon to 6pm

About Pipilotti Rist
Pipilotti Rist (born 1962) is a visual artist who creates colourful, kaleidoscopic moving image worlds that explore the relationship between nature, emotional states and the body, often combined with playful ideas and a sense of the surreal. She is known for her sensuous images and immersive environments that envelop the viewer and transports them into an otherworldly, wonderous realm.  Born in Switzerland, Rist has been a central figure within the international art scene since the mid-1980s. She has adapted her artistic language by integrating the fastmoving technological developments of her time, using immersive video installations as a way to empathise with others, imagining what they might see and playfully, colourfully and meticulously explore visual phenomena and human perception.

Rist has been an active figure on the museum, biennial and gallery circuit for over twenty-five years. Her recent solo exhibitions are Behind Your Eyelid at Tai Kwun Hong Kong (2022), Big Heartedness, Be My Neighbor at The Geffen Contemporary, MOCA, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles (2021–2022), Your Eye Is My Island at MoMAK, The National Museum of Modern Art Kyoto and ART TOWER MITO (2021). Åbn min Lysning. Open my Glade at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art Humlebæk Denmark (2019), Sip My Ocean at the Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney (2017–2018), Pixel Forest at New Museum New York (2016–2017) and Your Saliva is My Diving Suit of the Ocean of Pain at Kunsthaus Zürich (2016).

Her work has also appeared in the Venice Biennale (1997, 1999 and 2011), São Paulo Biennial (1994), Sydney Biennial (2000, 2008 and 2014), and the Istanbul Biennale (1997, 2000 and 2007).

About M+
M+ is a museum dedicated to collecting, exhibiting, and interpreting visual art, design and architecture, moving image, and Hong Kong visual culture of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District, it is one of the largest museums of modern and contemporary visual culture in the world, with a bold ambition to establish ourselves as one of the world’s leading cultural institutions. M+ is a new kind of museum that reflects our unique time and place, a museum that builds on Hong Kong’s historic balance of the local and the international to define a distinctive and innovative voice for Asia’s twenty-first century.

About the West Kowloon Cultural District
The West Kowloon Cultural District is one of the largest and most ambitious cultural projects in the world. Its vision is to create a vibrant new cultural quarter for Hong Kong on forty hectares of reclaimed land located alongside Victoria Harbour. With a varied mix of theatres, performance spaces, and museums, the West Kowloon Cultural District will produce and host world-class exhibitions, performances, and cultural events, providing twenty-three hectares of public open space, including a two-kilometre waterfront promenade.

About Art Basel
Founded in 1970 by gallerists from Basel, Art Basel today stages the world's premier art shows for Modern and Contemporary art, sited in Basel, Miami Beach, Hong Kong, and Paris. Defined by its host city and region, each show is unique, which is reflected in its participating galleries, artworks presented, and the content of parallel programming produced in collaboration with local institutions for each edition. Art Basel’s engagement has expanded beyond art fairs through new digital platforms and a number of new initiatives such as the Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report and Intersections: The Art Basel Podcast. For further information, please visit artbasel.com.