Pipilotti Rist's cerebral celebration dazzles Qatar Museums

It is well known that art is good for your mental health. Whether you create art yourself or whether you immerse yourself in someone else’s creation, the therapeutic value of art is undeniable.

At Pipilotti Rist's Your Brain to Me, My Brain to You exhibition in Doha, the comfortable couches around the installation prove its meditative value, occupied by visitors who sit quietly enjoying the visual spectacle.

The exhibition, which first opened in March 2022, has proven so popular that Qatar Museums decided to extend the show period until January 25, 2024.

"The lights, the colours, and the music all work harmoniously together, allowing visitors to leave the outside world behind them for the duration of the visit, settling into a kind of trace, a meditation, mesmerized by the immersive spectacle"

Born Elizabeth Charlotte Rist, Pipilotti is a fusion of Astrid Lindgren’s Pipi Longstocking and her childhood nickname of Lotti, the short version of Charlotte, is a visual artist, whose artworks are as colourful and individual as they are varied.

Born in the German-speaking part of Switzerland close to the Liechtenstein border, Rist studied Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria, and soon chose video as her main medium.

Rist’s video installations have been exhibited around the world, from the Venice Biennale to MOCA, LA, from the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark to the Royal Academy of the Arts in London. And while video remains her first love, the occasional light installations started to emerge, such as Pixel Forest Mutterplatte (2016), created in collaboration with light designer Kaori Kuwabara, shown in the New Museum in New York City between 2016 and 2017.

Consisting of 3,000 LED lights hanging from the ceiling representing pixels of light, it was a natural step from videos to individual pixels for Rist. While she said at the time that the LED lights were supposed to resemble oxygen bubbles from seagrass, they in fact strongly resemble the LED lights in Doha’s exhibition.

Visitors are encouraged to turn all cell phones off, in order to properly experience this artistic journey of self-discovery and quietly immerse themselves in the installation.

The entrance into the Your Brain to Me, My Brain to You exhibit in the National Museum of Qatar is via a pitch-black corridor, where the visitor emerges into a dark room with 12,000 LED lights – but not shockingly bright lights, ones which slowly and subtly change colour.

Not unlike a Kusama Infinity Room, this installation, once again conceived with Kaori Kuwabara, seems an endless universe of gentle lights encased in irregular plastic shapes, this time representing brain neurons, with the colour changes demonstrating the cognitive process.

Once you’ve slowly walked along the only path directly through the light creation, the couches are the obvious place to sit and take it all in. Unlike regular video installations, there seems to be no beginning or end, although there is a long loop, only really recognisable by a piece of music coming around again.

Unusually, this visual and musical installation has an official playlist, consisting of six pieces of music, altogether around 25 minutes long. Rist is said to have been looking for a sonic choreography that would cover a wide range of moods and emotions, allowing space for the individual visitor’s emotions to unfold during the experience.

The resulting musical compilation which accompanies the gentle light show, ranges from otherworldly notes to soft piano tunes, with a couple of vocal pieces, such as Maasai, by Portuguese artist Surma. There is even one eerie vocalised soundtrack specifically composed piece by Rist herself, together with Swiss musical artist Anders Guggisberg, who is also co-responsible for another piece of music on the list.

Speaking about the importance of the music set to the light installation, Rist said: "Music has always helped me to feel lighter and lifted me from the wants and worries of everyday life. I use music myself to transcend to other levels of consciousness and celebrate life and feelings. Music seems often like a collective thinking bubble where our heartbeats melt together.”

The lights, the colours, and the music all work harmoniously together, allowing visitors to leave the outside world behind them for the duration of the visit, settling into a kind of trace, a meditation, mesmerised by the immersive spectacle.

As if echoing the experience, Bouthanya Baltaji, Curator and Head of Exhibitions National Museum of Qatar said about the exhibition: “Your brain is strong, my brain is resilient. Our brains are complex. Over the past few years with the pandemic, we have individually and collectively, experienced trauma, loneliness, fear, anger, and confusion. And now, a new set of emotions have begun to surface. Confidence. Hope. Empathy. My experience is unique. Your experience matters too. I want to understand. Be kind. We are healing.”

Experiencing this exhibition feels just like that. Therapeutic and restorative. People come to the exhibition repeatedly - it is free for Qatar residents - just to sit and relax, being left to their thoughts while marvelling at the lights. Strangely enough, those thoughts rarely touch on work, or other day-to-day stresses, instead, your mind drifts and dreams, allowing you to emerge into the daylight with renewed energy.

Your Brain to Me, My Brain to You is on at the National Museum of Qatar until January 25, 2024.

Ulrike Lemmin-Woolfrey is a freelance journalist, author and translator. Ulrike specialises in travel and lifestyle, with a leaning toward the Middle East. Her bylines have appeared in international publications such as  BBC Travel, Positive News, Good Housekeeping, Lonely Planet, Travel + Leisure, Nat Geo, The Independent,  Fodor’s, TIME, Marriott Bonvoy Traveler, and many more

Follow her on Twitter: @ULemminWoolfrey