From Archives to Environments: A Dialogue on ‘Dream Rooms’

Ahead of the opening of the M+ Special Exhibition Dream Rooms: Environments by Women Artists 1950s–Now in Hong Kong, the curators met to discuss the history of the exhibition, including the original presentation, Inside Other Spaces. Environments by Women Artists 1956–1976 (2023–2024) at Haus der Kunst München, and when it travelled as Ambienti 1956–2010, Environments by Women Artists II (2024) to MAXXI in Rome. The conversation also explores how care efforts, collaboration, and commissions bring to light, and sometimes bring back to life, the history, and significant contributions of artists—including works by Asian women—in understanding the impact their ‘environments’ have made in shaping today’s immersive experiences.

Ingrid Pui Yee Chu: What is the historical significance of the first exhibition at Haus der Kunst?

Andrea Lissoni: Haus der Kunst is an institution that does not have a collection, supporting younger and mid-career artists working to bridge historical, forgotten, or unconsidered moments in art. This history hasn’t necessarily been acknowledged, allowing for the most experimental and adventurous research of contemporary times.

The initial idea was to track the history of ‘environments’ as an art form after the Second World War. My predecessor, Okwui Enwezor (1963–2019), had previously conceived Postwar: Art Between the Pacific and the Atlantic, 1945–1965 (2016–2017), a game-changing exhibition focusing on the Asia-Pacific region, covering around the same time period, which Inside Other Spaces humbly answers.^[1]

In 2020, I reached out to Marina, an art historian who specialises in conservation and who had surveyed all the environments by the first artist to have ever made them, Lucio Fontana. We started by collecting as many sources as possible of these environments. After almost two years, we had an incredible amount of adventurous, visual, and colourful environments conceived by artists and collectives.

Our research also resulted in a very different history: the story of women artists who made extraordinary and surprisingly untracked environments. It was transgenerational, transnational, and transdisciplinary, impeccably linking artists providing a critical take through immersive experiences. We also considered in consultation with specialists, if it made sense to curate a show only of women artists in 2023 and decided to move ahead.

Ingrid: Notably, some works are meticulously detailed reconstructions from archival materials. Marina, could you share more about these environments as an art historian who specialises in conservation?

Marina Pugliese: It’s important to go back to what an environment is: an immersive work of art, in-between design, art, and architecture. The very first to create one was the Italian-Argentinian artist Lucio Fontana in 1949. There were others before him, but he was the one claiming to have invented a radical new art form. Together with my co-curator Barbara Ferriani, who is also a conservator, we transformed my PhD research on Fontana’s environments into a 2017 exhibition at Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan.

We applied the same method here; we used deep archival research but also consulted experts to reproduce environments first made in the 1960s and 1970s. The difficulty with environments is that by being immersive, the sources are complex, implying a deep knowledge of historical materials. In this case, we activated a vast network of scholars in different universities and museums, who helped us since many artists are from different places, speak different languages, and have multiple archives.

Ingrid: Did your approach differ in terms of living and deceased artists? Some works have been updated for the exhibition.

Marina: Totally. Our first exhibition ended in 1976, so not many of the artists were still alive. Traditionally, for contemporary art conservators, once an artwork is done, it’s done. You listen to the artist’s voice, but you don’t modify the artwork. However, this exhibition focuses on women artists who were not given opportunities, and, generally, their exhibitions had low budgets. They were building the spaces they were not given to show their art, so we used a different approach in reproducing the work.

When remaking an artwork by an artist who has passed, we talk about ‘reproductions’ and for somebody who is alive, they’re ‘replicas’. But we decided that we would work with some of the living artists to update and produce the artwork the way they would have wanted if they had the means originally.

Ingrid: Since Haus der Kunst operates under a temporary exhibition model, does bringing back this work and travelling it to M+, keep the works alive, even temporarily?

Andrea: Absolutely. This show is a proposal for institutions to consider the possibilities of collecting whilst being affordable by not requiring storage space, only instructions for remaking the works. Then when travelling the show, we considered how this story can inhabit a completely different cultural context, but the main intention was for the works to be seen again.

Ingrid: Certainly, much has changed for the presentation at M+. The exhibition title is now Dream Rooms: Environments by Women Artists 1950s to Now, the time frame has been extended by some 55 years, and the artists’ list includes greater Asian representation. How did this framework come about? What will people see this time?

Russell Storer: As a visual culture museum, the M+ exhibition combines visual art, architecture, and design, which we actively show and collect. Time-based media comes into it, as well as looking at the intersections between global histories of art, in order to rewrite them.

Regarding the title change, the inspiration was Dream House (1962) by La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, which is also an environment.

The point is: most audiences here are unfamiliar with this history. We want to give people an idea of what they’re experiencing, something that sparks the imagination. Bringing the exhibition up until ‘now’ also allowed us to strengthen the representation of Asian women artists, but also more broadly show how this form of art continues today. Immersive art has become so popular, but primarily through digital means. We wanted to avoid screen-based work, so we continued in the spirit of the first exhibition. Dream Rooms really takes us into the historical lineage of how artists were already working with ‘new technologies’, but in terms of materials and new ideas at the time.

The M+ exhibition is also very interactive and constantly changing. Moving through the space, being able to interact with many of the environments, is both intensely physical and visual.

Ingrid: Did the Herzog & de Meuron building affect the way you installed Dream Rooms considering the type of work being featured?

Russell: Yes, each artist considered the space. Kimsooja, whose work was also featured at MAXXI, uses light to ‘wrap’ the building’s architecture, transforming the whole space simply by covering the windows with a diffraction film. Her work is ethereal and ephemeral, so we chose the atrium which is where the exhibition starts. The entire floor is flooded in kaleidoscopic light, which carries on down through the other floors, alerting you to different aspects of the architecture, which is so layered and interconnected. It becomes a new way of experiencing the space.

Chiharu Shiota’s work, being very tactile environments using thread and other objects, is different. The height of her space complements the incredible, theatrical aspect of her work which provides a singular kind of experience.

Pinaree Sanpitak has reconfigured an earlier work she first created in Singapore. Her reconfigurable room full of pillows feels very integrated with the space and resonates with the Marta Minujín ‘mattress’ work, as both offer a place to pause in the exhibition.

We also placed a former outdoor work by Lea Lublin inside a room with a wall of windows, so as the natural light flows in, you have a similar inside-outside experience moving through it.

So, the exhibition has different registers: one repels you, one leads you through, one makes you stop, one reflects you. There are all kinds of dynamics between you and the work.

Ingrid: Many people in Hong Kong are being introduced to these works for the first time. Why is it important to mount exhibitions around women artists, and particularly to present them in Asia?

Russell: It’s a history that people may not be familiar with, and Dream Rooms captures a multiplicity of experiences by bringing in more artists from across Asia. M+ also hosted the Yayoi Kusama exhibition, Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now, and she’s also from that period. She also makes environments, so there’s a dialogue, and the exhibition makes direct connections for people to see how this art form has a very long history of development.

Andrea: Actually, Japanese artist Yamazaki Tsuruko’s first environment was in 1956. Not only does this recontextualise the history of Gutai as a pioneering movement but adds another layer of history relative to Europe, rebalancing the perspective of transnationalism towards Asia.

Marina: When we talk about how the various contexts in which the works were made, the point is, too, that these artists were all connected. Japan, with its history, connected with Europe, the United States, and Latin America. Most of the artists knew each other, were looking at each other, and influencing each other.

Ingrid: How many works are newly commissioned for M+, and how do these compare with the other exhibitions?

Russell: There are three commissions (by Kimsooja, Pinaree Sanpitak, and Chiharu Shiota) and it’s interesting to see how these works intersect with each other and past versions of the exhibition in unexpected ways.

Marina: I think they integrate well. I love the dialogue between Yamazaki Tsuruko and Chiharu Shiota in terms of colour and their rooms, because Tsuruko builds a small room, while Chiharu occupies an entire room. They have two different approaches, but with similar visual languages. Then with Kimsooja, it’s very different because it’s an intervention which takes over the atrium.

The three works are beautifully integrated, and we’re so happy to have more contemporary Asian contributions. The whole idea is to customise the places where the works are being installed, so that the exhibition history is also completed by the regional history.

Besides the documentation, the actual experience is the real game changer. You can write on the history of environments, but it will never have the impact of an exhibition. It’s magnificent that the exhibition travels, not only because it aims to change the prevalent narrative, but that more people will have the possibility of experiencing these works. It’s not something that you can read in a book. You must be able to react to the works themselves.

Ingrid: Exhibitions like this, regardless of where they take place, are significant because seeing them can cause us to rethink an artist’s work and their place in history. But you can touch almost everything here too, which shows, literally, how Dream Rooms insists on physical interaction, but also brings joy.

Marina: Yes, by encouraging artists like Tania Mouraud to reproduce her artwork, and since the exhibition travelled, she was given greater visibility which contributes to the history of artists who may be less known.

Andrea: The relationship with the three living artists: Marta Minujín, Tania Mouraud, and Judy Chicago were very different and their contributions, the outcome of our conversations with them. In some cases, we suggested to replicate a work found in a slide, which is also significant as we could reclaim a particular moment being shown, and so the whole story would not be erased.

Ingrid: In terms of being able to see and study works, how important are collections? What is M+ actively doing to ensure that works by women are recorded and shared now and for the future?

Russell: As a major museum and collection established in Hong Kong since 2012, it remains necessary to collect, document, and tell these stories through exhibitions. M+ began collecting just over a decade ago, and by learning from the discourse that has been happening over the last few decades, we’ve been able to tell a very different story from the start. Having the Sigg Collection as a starting point, we’re rethinking collections, historical narratives, and about our location in new and meaningful ways.

Essentially, how we connect to other histories is crucial. Doing so involves collaborations between institutions because no one institution can do everything. It’s how you plug into different networks, collections, and research programmes that will really enrich the wider landscape.