Rirkrit Tiravanija

From the start of his practice, a critical material for Rirkrit Tiravanija (Thai, b. 1961) has been the presence of “a lot of people”—a purposefully broad and expansive term that stands as an open invitation to everyone and anyone, present and future. His largest exhibition to date, Rirkrit Tiravanija: A LOT OF PEOPLE traces four decades of the artist’s career and features over 100 works, from early experimentations with installation and film, to works on paper, photographs, ephemera, sculptures, and newly produced “demonstrations” of key participatory pieces. The exhibition includes rarely seen early works that address his experiences as an immigrant with a palpable sense of “otherness” in a Western-centric art world, alongside more recent series that tackle global politics and the quotidian news cycle. Several interactive works will also be on view, along with restagings of five participatory works scheduled at set intervals throughout the run of the exhibition. These happenings will be staged anew in site-specific enactments at MoMA PS1—an experiment in presenting and reconsidering his situational performances. By surveying his practice as a sculptor, filmmaker, traveler, collaborator, and mentor, A LOT OF PEOPLE provides an overview of the striking complexity of Tiravanija’s efforts to “bring people in” to encounter each other and “make less things, but more useful relationships.”

Rirkrit Tiravanija is the winner of the Absolut Art Award (2010), the Hugo Boss Prize (2004), the 5th Benesse Prize (2003), and the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Lucelia Artist Award (2003). Recent solo exhibitions include the Hirshhorn Museum (2019); the National Gallery Singapore (2018); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2016); the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2015); the Kunsthalle Bielefeld (2010); the Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel (2009); the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; the Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Serpentine Gallery, London (all 2005); as well as at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2004). Tiravanija has been on the faculty of the School of Visual Arts at Columbia University since 2000. He is the co-founder of The Land Foundation, located in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and a member of Bangkok’s alternative space and magazine VER.