Rirkrit Tiravanija: A LOT OF PEOPLE
MoMA PS1
Oct 12, 2023–Mar 4, 2024
“Perfectly presenting a work of art, stripping it of its context or pretending to tell a new story, is this artistic creation? Why not try tasting curry and chatting about daily life in a museum? Art comes from life!“
Rirkrit Tiravanija, an artist known worldwide for his participatory spatial installations, will present a different kind of opera, installation and interactive works at the Haus der Kunst in Munich this May. In addition, he will also hold his largest multi-media retrospective exhibition to date, “A LOT OF PEOPLE” (2023.10.12-2024.03) at MoMA PS1 in New York this fall, fully demonstrating his philosophical power to break the definition of art.
1: The moment you become someone else, you disappear
Born in Buenos Aires, known as the “Paris of South America” in the golden age of the post-war period, Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija (b.1961) grew up in Thailand, Ethiopia, Canada and other countries. As the son of a diplomat, he has an innate global vision, and at the same time he maintains a high degree of sensitivity and dialectical thinking towards different cultures and diverse contexts. In his personal project that just ended at the Haus der Kunst in Munich, Germany, Tiravanija once again rewrote and performed a deconstructed performance and decentralized collaborative stage. Just like he always uses “Untitled” plus the year and “()” to name almost all of his works. For example: “Untitled 2016 (where do you fit into all of this) (one, two, three, four)”, “Untitled 2013 (morgen ist die frage)”. Tiravanija also continues his questioning of the established system and the dissolution of the boundary between subject and object.
“I invite the audience to ‘enter’ my work and gain some unconventional experiences in the name of art.” For example, the carefully crafted visual landscapes scattered throughout the exhibition hall, which initially extended from Robert Smithson’s “Corner Mirror with Coral” (1969), and developed into the current 3D printed landscape installation “Untitled 2016 (where do you fit into all of this) (one, two, three, four)”, are like the self-pity of a potted plant, or an invitation to dance with “others”; however, the monologue here may be just as Tiravanija said earlier: “When you finally become someone, the self disappears immediately” – when you look into the abyss, the abyss is also staring at you. The classic work “Untitled 2013 (morgen ist die frage)” placed in an independent exhibition hall presents two sets of ping-pong tables with sans-serif printed text and two pairs of rackets with handwritten question marks. Even if the questions raised cannot be answered at the moment, individuals can fill their fantasies with actions by personally participating in an aerobic interaction or gathering at the bar created by Tiravanija in the exhibition hall. This also cleverly echoes Edmund Husserl’s way of existence of the transcendental self, that is, living in the present.
The interactivity that already exists in life scenes is grafted into art exhibitions. The switching of contexts can trigger visitors’ different participation experiences, and at the same time, it also states Tiravanija’s repeated questioning of the question “What is the difference between art (products) and daily (objects)?” In the Art House, people can almost walk into all the works, including tasting Japanese tea art on stage theaters and workshops for printing slogan T-shirts. Tiravanija explores the positive energy of peaceful coexistence, gradually dismantling the so-called art from concept to design, and reinterpreting the famous West German play “Fear Devours the Soul” (Angst essen Seele auf, 1974) which is closely related to the spatial background in a metaphysical and reshaped performance way, as well as the one-act opera “Hanjo” (2003) that the artist has always loved, the oriental culture.
The original play of “Hanjo” was composed by Japanese composer Toshio Hosokawa based on the “Modern Noh Collection” by the famous playwright Yukio Mishima. It tells the various emotions experienced by the geisha Hanako while waiting for her lover Yoshio to return, including encounters and separations, waiting and giving up, madness and reason. Tiravanija invited the Bavarian State Opera and many collaborators involved in choreography, makeup and vocal directors to complete this epic work together. The transparent, hollow stage is almost swallowed up by the dark environment. The rime-like bonsai on the stage and the single fan leaning against it present a suspended and ethereal psychological reflection. The restraint, silence and beauty of Japanese culture are condensed in the foreign scene. The black silhouettes of the actors are engraved on the wall, and the crystal-like stage frame structure is like a white arrow light, indicating the established plot and piercing the audience’s senses. Tiravanija’s “dasein” as an artist is reflected not only in the skillful control of the field dialogue, but also in the blank space for emotions and the unknown.
2: Art creation or a false proposition?
As an artist who has been in the industry for more than 30 years and is widely recognized by the outside world as a heavyweight representative of “relational aesthetics”, Tiravanija, while thinking about the various combinations of objects, people and the environment, is more often trying to continuously reduce dimensions and open up in the public context, using “communication media” such as food, land, newspapers and light industrial products that everyone is familiar with to challenge the definition of art and even life. Looking at the logic behind Tiravanija’s works and connecting them in time, it is not difficult to find that what he is trying to question is art itself. “It is difficult for me to judge whether an object or an action is ‘art’, because whether it is an amazing craftsmanship or a rigorous and wonderful conceptual experience, it is likely that it has already appeared in our long history.” Tiravanija studied history at Carleton University in Canada when he was young, and then completed professional studies including art creation and research in Toronto, Chicago and New York. What art or culture gives back to him is free expression beyond restrictions and independent dialectical thinking. Tiravanija’s creative scope includes but is not limited to painting, installation, sculpture, book, video and performance, as well as public food projects that “bring people together again”.
Located in Southeast Asia, Thailand is accustomed to and proud of its love for food and sharing it with others in a public environment. Thai fried noodles, Korean kimchi, Chinese fried dough sticks and tofu pudding, these “Asian symbols” are excellent creative media in Tiravanija’s eyes – their profound origins and development, extremely wide dissemination and participation, and these foods as “works” that are inseparable from local culture and have sensory experience and memory connection have surpassed many pretentious “artistic creations”. In his first solo exhibition at the Paula Allen Gallery in New York in 1990, Tiravanija created his first food project “Untitled 1990 (pad thai)” (1990). Regardless of nationality or origin, the audience can freely enjoy the free Thai fried noodles. Two years later, in a solo exhibition at 303 Gallery in New York, while Tiravanija continued to provide food, the exhibition hall was filled with waste and became a square warehouse, no longer a traditional white box. Art critic Jerry Saltz once commented on Tiravanija’s cooking performance and warehouse exhibition, believing that this attempt created a simple but magical “place for sharing, playing and frank communication”. Artistic creation may be a false proposition, and improvisation and daily interaction are the negatives of life.
In the years since then, Tiravanija has implemented his public food projects in many places around the world. Every time he goes to a place, he will personally experience and find out the most common and special types of meals in the local area. Discover and quote the cultural DNA that has long been encoded in people’s genes and blood, and insert it into the original almost vacuum art environment to let the latter take root again. If the food project is intended to break the cultural shackles and creative difficulties, then the printed works that are based on daily newspapers and use text as another image system may more concentratedly show Tiravanija’s focused exploration of establishing information interaction relationships. In the theme series “DO WE DREAM UNDER THE SAME SKY”, there is a large collaborative space installation integrating kitchen, restaurant and garden implemented by Tiravanija at the Basel Art Fair in 2015, as well as flat printing on newspapers in different languages; in 2022, the third Okayama International Art Festival in Japan will once again use this question slogan as the theme, providing a collision and fusion of globalization and neoliberalism from a post-epidemic perspective, while giving Tiravanija’s work community a new and changing contemporary significance.
3: One hundred times of loss and return of “unnamed”
Tiravanija, an artist immersed in a multicultural environment, is not only a creator of conceptual scenes and relational aesthetics, but also an international curator, designer and co-creation collaborator. Through different working methods, Tiravanija has always questioned the definition of art and even the true meaning of life. Although the current situation is complex and changeable, “spiritual food” is still meaningful and necessary for human society. Tiravanija believes that the essence of things lies first in its construction logic, and second in abandoning this logic and returning to the unknown. The core concept of “returning culture to its original context” is not only reflected in the reference of daily objects, the reinterpretation of famous works, and the involvement of the public from all over the world. While artistic creation returns to the original text, Tiravanija’s persistence is also repeatedly practiced in the naming form. Every “Untitled” suffix records the philosophical thinking of each year.
Tiravanija is undoubtedly a diligent and prolific artist. After several works and projects were unveiled this year, Tiravanija will hold the largest exhibition to date, “A LOT OF PEOPLE”, at MoMA PS1 in October. The exhibition will continue to present his usual medium, “people”, and open its doors to every visitor. Through more than 100 works, people will be told about the artist’s low-carbon concept: making fewer things and establishing more meaningful relationships. In the title of his solo exhibition “Cooking Up an Art Experience” held at MoMA in New York 11 years ago and in Tiravanija’s previous expressions, he constructed and displayed, invited observation and participation—through all forms of interaction with others, he reconstructed a new layer of relational narrative, over and over again—thus forming a living vessel of experience, just like 3D printing an idea, a tower of existence stacked to the south.
*Originally published on Numéro Art China, Summer Issue: Shapeshifting, #7 2023: 130–135. | ISSN: 2789-2980. [snapshot]
Yuting (Roxy) TANG 