RIRKRIT TIRAVANIJA

Early Years

Rirkrit Tiravanija was born in Buenos Airies in 1961. The son of a Thai diplomat, he moved around frequently—his father was stationed in Ethiopia, Thailand and Canada. Accidentally discovering a book about the Ontario College of Art in a school counsellor’s office, he applied and was accepted. “When I... enrolled for my foundation year,” he remembers, “I was placed in... the class of ‘misfits’. In our first drawing class, the instructor told us to make a drawing without using any paper or pencil. At that moment, everything clicked for me. I was in the right time and the right place.” Tiravanija graduated with a BA in 1984, then attending the Banff Centre School for Fine Arts, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (MFA, 1986)—during this period he also participated in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s independent study programme.

Rirkrit Tiravanija: Artworks

Rirkrit Tiravanija uses relational aesthetics to put people at the centre of his artworks. He uses installation, painting, text, printmaking, photography, video and music, yet his works fly in the face of traditional ideas of art classification. His pieces break down the gap between Western ideas of looking at objects and actually using objects.

• Untitled 1990 (Pad Thai) (1990) was first staged at Paula Allen Gallery in New York City. Tiravanija envisioned the piece as him cooking and then the audience sitting and eating. However, when he arrived at the gallery with the ingredients, visitors were already arriving. There are several steps involved in making pad thai (soaking the noodles, cooking the ingredients), so Tiravanija’s friends stepped in to help him—and the visitors formed a queue, as if this was perhaps the catering for the show. “When I took a step back to look at everything,” he said in 2025, I realised that this is how art should be. I had five woks, my friends were helping to cook and peel shrimp, and people were enjoying the food. I did not want to be a performer cooking pad thai for people. I wanted it to be communal, with everyone coming together to put work on the art piece together.”
• Untitled 2002 (he promised) was inspired by Rudolf Schindler’s open-plan Kings Road House in West Hollywood, replacing the concrete and wood with chrome and steel, whose reflective surfaces that create multiple images of those inside the structure. Reimagining the space as a place where people could come together, it hosted children’s workshops, DJ sessions and other participatory experiences.
• Tiravanija’s 2019–2020 exhibition at Glenstone, Maryland, was another example of his blurring of the boundaries between life and art. He reconfigured the gallery building to play with the idea of the space’s function, offering interactive experiences including a silk-screen-printing workshop and a facsimile of his first solo gallery show. He painted “Fear Eats the Soul” on to the gallery walls, and local graffiti artists gradually covered the words in their own art.

Rirkrit Tiravanija: Select Awards

• Benesse Prize, Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum (1994)
• Lucelia Artist Award from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC (2003)
• Hugo Boss Prize, Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York City (2004)
• Silpathorn Award, Office of Contemporary Art and Culture, Thailand (2017)

Rirkrit Tiravanija: Select Exhibitions

Select Solo Exhibitions

• Rirkrit Tiravanija: The House that Jack Built, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan (2026)
• Rirkrit Tiravanija: In Aliens We Trust, Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris (2025)
• Rirkrit Tiravanija: (the intellects take leave), Gladstone Gallery, Brussels (2025)
• Rirkrit Tiravanija: A Million Rabbit Holes, Pilar Corrias, London (2024)
• Rirkrit Tiravanija: We Don’t Recognise What We Don’t See, Singapore Tyler Print Institute (2023)
• Rirkrit Tiravanija: Submit to the Black Compost, Gladstone Gallery, Seoul (2022)
• Rirkrit Tiravanija: untitled 2018 (the infinite dimension of smallness), Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle (2021)
• Rirkrit Tiravanija: Curry for the Soul of the Forgotten, neugerriemschneider, Berlin (2017)
• Focus: Rirkrit Tiravanija, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (2014)
• Rirkrit Tiravanija, Soup/No Soup, Grand Palais, Paris (2010)
• Rirkrit Tiravanija: The House the Cat Built, Galería Salvador Díaz, Madrid (2009)
• Nomadic Residents: Rirkrit Tiravanija, Ontario College of Art and Design (2007)
• Hugo Boss Prize 2004: Rirkrit Tiravanija, Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York City (2005)
• Rirkrit Tiravanija: Untitled 2001 (Demo Station No 3), Portikus, Frankfurt (2001)
• Projects 58: Rirkrit Tiravanija, MoMA, New York City (1997)
• Rirkrit Tiravanija: Untitled 1994 (Beauty), Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco (1994)
• Rirkrit Tiravanija: Untitled 1990 (pad thai), Paula Allen Gallery, New York City (1990)

Select Group Exhibitions

• Qatar Pavilion, 61st Venice Biennale (2026)
• lull between storms, 1301PE, Los Angeles (2026)
• Love Poems: Singing In Unison, Part 11_, Anton Kern Gallery, New York City (2025)
• David Zwirner: 30 Years, David Zwirner, Los Angeles (2024)
• Let the Sunshine In, Pilar Corrias, London (2023)
• The Same Sea, Helsinki Biennial (2021)
• Bethlehem Hospital, Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York City (2019)
• All the World’s Futures, 56th Venice Biennale (2015)
• Do A Book, White Space Beijing (2012)
• Commercial Break, Garage Projects, 54th Venice Biennale (2011)
• The Spirit of the Haus, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2009)
• The Freak Show, Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon (2007)
• Installation art 1969–2002, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2003)
• dAPERTutto, 48th Venice Biennale (1999)
• Supastore De Luxe, Up & Co, New York City (1996)
• Cardinal Points of Art, 45th Venice Biennale (1993)
• Caught in a Revolving Door, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1989)

Further Reading

• Artist profile page at David Zwirner
• 2025 interview in Art and Market
• 2023 interview in The Brooklyn Rail

Rirkrit Tiravanija FAQs

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