A LOT OF PEOPLE

In the early 1990s, Rirkrit Tiravanija (Thai, b. 1961) became renowned for cooking pieces that took place in galleries and museums, which both exhilarated and confounded audiences.

Since then, Tiravanija has continued to create “situations” that introduce smell, taste, touch, and waste —in other words, life and utility— into the sterile space of the white cube. In concert with these more ephemeral situations, he creates art objects and installations that trade in myriad forms of cultural translation and mistranslation: using multiple languages, appropriating imagery, restaging his own work, and constructing architectural replicas. Often citing art history, cinema, and vernacular Thai culture while folding in aspects of his own biography, Tiravanija puts forth open-ended proposals to generate “another notion of culture,” one less reliant on Western understandings of aesthetics and authenticity.

Titled A LOT OF PEOPLE, a frequent material line in many of Tiravanija’s interactive pieces, this exhibition encompasses works that invite the visitor’s participation, as well as sculptures, films, photographs, paintings, and works on paper. This major survey exhibition of Tiravanija’s practice brings together works made over four decades while living between New York, Berlin, and Chiang Mai (Thailand), and includes several pieces that have not been seen or experienced since their initial presentation. Critical to the recent evolution of the art scene worldwide, Tiravanija’s interdisciplinary approach engages with notions of cultural difference as well as parameters of place and the ways in which people come together.

Central to the exhibition are multimedia installations that emphasize concerns about politics, while critically reflecting on current social conditions around the world, the struggle to sustain democracy, and proliferating protest movements. Interactive pieces will be enacted during the exhibition in newly conceived presentations. In this manner, Tiravanija continues to reactivate and translate his own works into new pieces that can adapt into the future. He describes this ongoing evolution: “Like a good recipe, everyone knows what it is, what it tastes like and even how to make it again — perhaps even differently, following their own interpretation; or perhaps it would be a base for something completely different, a possibility.”

"Rirkrit Tiravanija : A LOT OF PEOPLE" is organized in partnership with MoMA PS1, curatedy by Ruba Katrib, Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, MoMA PS1, and Yasmil Raymond, Rector, St.delschule and Director of Portikus, Frankfurt, with Jody Graf and Kari Rittenbach, Assistant Curators, MoMA PS1.

The exhibition at LUMA Arles is curated by Vassilis Oikonomopoulos, Director of Exhibitions and Programs.

Practical Information

From 1 June 2024 to 3 November 2024

Parc des Ateliers, Les Forges

240531-LUMA-RIRKRITTIRAVANIJA-VICTOR_SIMON_IRISMILLOT-28

Crédits

Interview with Rirkrit Tiravanija

In the early 1990s, Rirkrit Tiravanija became known for his culinary artworks created in galleries and museums, which both delighted and puzzled the audience.

What role does the human element play in his artistic practice? How does one create life around an artwork? How important is the notion of transgression in his work?

In this interview, the artist shares his artistic vision through his major retrospective "A LOT OF PEOPLE".

Rirkrit Tiravanija

Voir la page de l’artiste

Since the 1990s, Rirkrit Tiravanija (b. 1961, Buenos Aires, Argentina) has aligned his artistic production with an ethic of social engagement, often inviting viewers to inhabit and activate his work. Solo exhibitions include the ICA London (permanent installation), Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian, Washington D.C. (2019), the National Gallery of 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 in London (2005), as well as the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam (2004). Tiravanija’s work has been recognized with numerous awards and grants including the 2010 Absolut Art Award, the 2004 Hugo Boss Prize awarded by the Guggenheim Museum, and the 2003 Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Lucelia Artist Award. Tiravanija lives and works in New York, Berlin, and Chiang Mai. He is on the faculty of the School of Visual Arts at Columbia University, and is a founding member and curator of Utopia Station, a collective project of artists, art historians, and curators. Tiravanija is also President of an educational-ecological project known as The Land Foundation, located in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and is part of a collective alternative space called VER in Bangkok.