Rirkrit Tiravanija

Rirkrit Tiravanija(Thai:ฤกษ์ฤทธิ์ ตีระวนิช,pronounced[rɯkrittirawanit]) is a Thai contemporary artist residing inNew York City, Berlin, and Chiangmai, Thailand.He was born inBuenos Aires, Argentina in 1961. His installations often take the form of stages or rooms for sharing meals, cooking, reading or playing music; architecture or structures for living and socializing are a core element in his work.
The son of a Thai diplomatand an oral surgeon,Tiravanija was born in Buenos Aires in 1961 and was raised in Thailand, Ethiopia, and Canada.He learned English at an international school in Ethiopia before being sent to a Catholic school back home in Thailand, where his grandmother operated a garden restaurant.
After initially studying history atCarleton University, he later enrolled in theOntario College of Artin Toronto (1980–84), theBanff Center School of Fine Arts(1984), theSchool of the Art Institute of Chicago(1984–86), and theWhitney Independent Studies Programin New York (1985–86).He moved to Manhattan in 1982.
According to art historian Rochelle Steiner, Tiravanija's work " Is fundamentally about bringing people together."The artist's installations of the early-1990s involved cooking meals for gallery-goers.In one of his best-known series, beginning withpad thai(1990), at the Paula Allen Gallery in New York, he rejected traditional art objects altogether and instead cooked and served food for exhibition visitors.He used a westernized recipe that was being popularized by an expat Englishwoman who had written a cookbook after visiting Bangkok; the recipe substituted ketchup for tamarind paste, and the meal was prepared in a West Bendwok, a then-new appliance.
Tiravanija later recreated the installation in 2007 at theDavid Zwirner Galleryin Chelsea using the original elements and renaming the workUntitled (free still).In 1995 he presented a similar untitled work at theCarnegie Internationalexhibition at theCarnegie Museum of Art, where he included wall text that presented written instructions for cooking South-east Asian green curry, which was then prepared for visitors.As a prelude to the opening ofLa Triennale2012, Tiravanija was invited to transform the main nave of theGrand Palaisinto a festive, large-scale, twelve-hour banquet composed of a single meal ofTom Kha soup(Soup/No Soup, 2012).
In 2015, Tiravanija andGavin Brownopened Unclebrother, a restaurant and gallery in a former car dealership inHancock, New York.
Other exhibitions are also based on interaction and exchange among participants. Some viewers, like the students who lived inUntitled 1999, a recreation of Tiravanija's East Village apartment, actually moved in for the duration of an exhibition. A 2005 solo show atSerpentine Gallery, London, featured two new, full-scale replicas of this apartment, complete with kitchen, bath, and bedroom.In other projects, he has bricked up the entrance to gallery spaces, rendering them impenetrable for the duration of the respective exhibition. Tiravanija painted the words " Ne Travaillez Jamais" on the wall, a phrase lifted from the May 1968, protest riots in Paris.
When Tiravanija does make objects, they are most often multiples and ephemera connected with exhibitions.Since the early 1990s, Tiravanija has published multiples in the form of backpacks, cooking utensils, and maps as part of his practice. These commonplace objects used for cooking or camping serve today as memories of the artist's earlier projects and also stimulate new interactions, whether physical or purely in the imagination. InUntitled 2008–2011 (the map of the land of feeling), Tiravanija presents a visual chronology of his life and work between 1988 and 2008, as told through the pages of his expansive passport.
In 1997 Tiravanija began an engagement with modernist architecture when he installed in theMuseum of Modern Art's sculpture gardenUntitled: 1997 (Glass House), a child-size version ofPhilip Johnson'sGlass House(1949). Similarly,untitled 2002 (he promised)is an arena of activities ranging from DJ sessions to film screenings within a chrome and steel structure inspired byRudolf M. Schindler'sKings Road House(1922) in West Hollywood.In Tiravanija'suntitled 2006 (pavilion, table and puzzle)installation, visitors are welcome to gather at a picnic table to assemble an expansive puzzle depictingEugène Delacroix’s 1830 masterpiece,Liberty Leading the People; a pavilion-like structure, a replica of one designed byJean Prouvéfor use in French colonial Africa, completes the tableau.ForAsile Flottant(2010), he constructed a sketch ofLe Corbusier’s boat of the same name and inserted a section of it into a gallery.Le Corbusier’s barge was designed for theSalvation Armyliterally as a floating asylum meant to provide temporary overnight shelter for vagrants wandering the streets of Paris; Tiravanija’s barge, constructed inChiang Mai, was to serve as a pavilion that houses both political T-shirts designed by the artist, and others that have been collected from all over the world.
In 2004 theSolomon R. Guggenheim MuseuminNew Yorkhonoured Tiravanija with theHugo Boss Prizeand presented an exhibition of his work, which had more overtly political tones. Featured in this exhibition,Untitled 2005 (The Air Between the Chain-Link Fence and the Broken Bicycle Wheel)was an installation in which the artist addressed governmental control of popular media by installing a low-tech pirate television station within the museum, using a simple metal antenna and cables as broadcasting equipment, accompanied by a small wooden structure housing a television set and chairs. On the gallery walls Tiravanija featured the text of the US Constitution’s First Amendment (advocating freedom of speech), a history of radio and television communication in America, and simple directions for constructing low-tech broadcasting equipment. Tiravanija’s support of free speech is conveyed by his choice to broadcast the low-budget filmPunishment Park(1971), a documentary on the suppression of Vietnam War protests.
For the season 2006/2007 in theVienna State Opera, Tiravanija designed the large scale picture (176 sqm) "Fear Eats the Soul" as part of the exhibition series "Safety Curtain", conceived bymuseum in progress.
AlongsideHans Ulrich ObristandPhilippe Parreno, Tiravanija staged the operaIl Tempo del postino (‘Postman Time’)with the participation of a number of leading contemporary visual artists, first unveiled at the Manchester International Festival in 2007 and later atArt Baselfair in an expanded form in 2009.
"It is not what you see that is important but what takes place between people."
Tiravanija releasedChew the Fatin 2008. The work presents filmic portraits of twelve artists, all chosen by Tiravanija, that belong to the same generation as him, that rose to critical attention in the 1990s. All good friends, they rose to international success. Relating to the name, they create a relaxed situation where conversation flows naturally, with personal issues arising to do with work and career.
It premiered as part of the exhibition "theanyspacewhatever" at theSolomon R. Guggenheim Museumin New York.Tiravanija's second feature film,Lung Neaw Visits His Neighbourswas released in 2011. The film was shown at theOrizzontisection of the68th Venice International Film Festival. The documentary features a retired farmer that lives in a tranquil village inChiang Mai, far from the recent political turmoil inBangkok. At a moment when many people are demanding equality, opportunity, and democracy, we see in Lung Neaw an existence marked by compassion for his environment and his fellow villagers. The film offers a contemplative look at one man's humble dialogue with his surroundings.
Tiravanija was the co-curator of the Station Utopia project at the 2003 Venice Biennale together withHans Ulrich ObristandMolly Nesbit. In 1998, he co-founded a collaborative educational-ecological project known as The Land Foundation with Thai artist Kamin Lerdchaiprasert, located in the northern part of Thailand, near the village of Sanpathong, 20 km southwest from the provincial city of Chiang Mai. The project combines contemporary art interventions and agricultural traditional values; the six-hectare landis intended to be cultivated as an open space or community free from ownership, and residents and artists are welcomed to use a plot of land as a laboratory for development‚ cultivating rice, building sustainable houses, or channeling solar power.Tiravanija is also part of a collective alternative space called Gallery VER located in Bangkok. He maintains his primary residence and studio in Chiang Mai.
In 2009, Tiravanija was a member of a think tank established to define the model and architecture of the Guggenheim Urdaibai, an annex for the existingGuggenheim Museum Bilbao.
Tiravanija is a Professor of Professional Practice in Visual Arts in the Faculty of the Arts atColumbia University.
Tiravanija's work has been presented widely at museums and galleries throughout the world including solo exhibitions at theDrawing Center, New York (2008);Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris(2005);Serpentine Gallery, London (2005);Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig(2003);Secession, Vienna (2002);Portikus, Frankfurt (2001); Center for Contemporary Art, Kitakyushu, Japan (2000);Los Angeles County Museum of Art(1999); and theMuseum of Modern Art, New York (1997).
He had a retrospective exhibition at theMuseum Boijmans Van BeuningeninRotterdamthat then was presented inParisandLondon. He has participated in such notable group exhibitions as theSharjah Biennial8,United Arab Emirates(2007); 27thSão Paulo Biennial, Brazil (2006);Whitney Biennial2006: Day for Night,New York City(2005); the 50thVenice Biennale(2003); andSkulptur Projekte Münster(1997). Tiravanija participated in the 9thGwangju Biennale(2012).
In 2019, theHirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Gardenin Washington, D.C. premieredRirkrit Tiravanija: (who’s afraid of red, yellow, and green)which, in addition to transforming the museum's galleries into a communal dining space, invited local artists to participate in the creation of a communal mural over the course of the three-month long exhibition. Visitors of the museum were given the opportunity to have a bowl of curry whilst also discussing with each other the murals that were displayed around them, notably, portraying significant historical events such asMartin Luther King Jr.'sMarch on Washingtonin 1963. The title of the exhibition and the colours of the curry referred to the different colours worn by the various factions in recent Thai government protests.Tiravanija claimed that the purpose of this exhibition and the three colours of the curry is "nourishing food for the belly while contemplating the images' food for thought."
Tiravanija's artwork, which explores the social role of the artist, has been regularly cited by French curatorNicolas Bourriaudas exemplary of his conception ofrelational art.However, addressing Tiravanija's work (amongst others) as paradigmatic ofrelational art,Claire Bishopchallenges his (and RA's) emancipatory claims and criticises him (as part of the RA movement) for benefiting from "ubiquitous presence on the international art scene" and "collaps[ing] into compensatory (and self-congratulatory) entertainment."
Tiravanija's work has been recognised with numerous awards and grants including a Gordon Matta Clark Foundation Award, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Competition Award (1993),National Endowment for the ArtsVisual Artist Fellowship (1994), the Benesse by the Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum in Japan, theLucelia Artist Awardfrom theSmithsonian American Art Museum(2003),and theHugo Boss Prizefrom theSolomon R. Guggenheim Museumin New York (2004).Stefano Pasquinidedicated a song to him in the CD "Canzoni che costano un po' meno del solito" in 2011.
Tiravanija was married to painterElizabeth Peytonin 1991. They separated in the late 1990s and divorced in 2004. They are both represented byGavin Brown's Enterprisegallery in New York and neugerriemschneider in Berlin.
Tiravanija has a weekend home in theCatskills.