Rirkrit Tiravanija was born in Buenos 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.
His practice defies media-based description combining traditional object making, public and private performances, teaching, and other forms of public service and social action.
The artist’s installations of the early-1990s involved cooking meals for gallery-goers.In one of his best-known series, begun with pad 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 recreated the installation in 2007 at the David Zwirner gallery in Chelsea using the original elements and renaming the work untitled (Free/Still). In 1995, he presented a similar untitled work at the Carnegie International exhibition at the Carnegie 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 of La Triennale 2012, Tiravanija was invited to transform the main nave of the Grand Palais into a festive, large-scale, twelve-hour banquet composed of a single meal of Tom Kha soup (Soup/No Soup, 2012).
External Links
- For further information on his works at MoMa website: http://www.moma.org/collection/artists/7479