Performer and Participant

Pepperminta, a red-haired woman, travels across land and water in this work. She is mostly unclothed to represent a human being unconnected to a time, class or place. Her body is magnified and multiplied, while a pig, apples, tulips and strawberries appear distorted and giant. As Pepperminta moves through water, her menstrual blood blends into the sea. Rist has said, ‘I think a girl should shout for joy the first time she gets her period, because it is a symbol of creative power, of life. Blood, our lifeblood.’ Drawn in by her dream-like spaces and larger-than-life images, we might feel transported to another universe.

There is no dialogue for us to follow, only a psychedelic soundtrack by Anders Guggisberg and Roland Widmer – two of the artist’s many long-term collaborators. Rist uses saturated colours and special editing techniques in her work. Aiming to draw us into fantasy worlds so we also become part of them, Rist has said: ‘At first you look at the box, at the [television] screen or projection, but when you concentrate on the sequences you feel as if you’re inside the box, behind the glass, within the wall. You forget everything around you… you’re swallowed.’ Rist wants the artwork to feel ‘noble and inviting’.

A Tax Haven Run By Women is an installation of sculptures and costumes made by Chetwynd that she uses for live performances. These imagine an anarchic game-show style competition between two teams, ‘Women Who Refuse to Grow Old Gracefully’, inspired by the actor and singer Mae West, and ‘The Oppressed Purée’. The teams compete via a dance-off for a ride to a tax haven (a place with very low tax for foreign investors). They travel in the Catbus, a character from Hayao Miyazaki’s animated film My Neighbour Totoro (1988). Meanwhile, other performers act as a male cult leader, and seals, controlling the soundtrack. Chetwynd’s performances and costumes are absurd, irreverent and spontaneous. However, her work often stems from research into economics, anthropology and maverick individuals. A Tax Haven Run By Women reflects on the similarity between cults and tax havens. Both tend to exist in remote locations isolated from regular society. Chetwynd says, ‘The performance is weirdly a combination of goofy, dreamlike Mae West women running a tax haven which is this wonderful place where you do actually want to be, and the kind of scary arsehole cult leader gone wrong.’