Kiran Nadar Museum of Art Artist Talk: Rirkrit Tiravanija - Making Without Objects →

Rirkrit Tiravanija | Kiran Nadar Museum of Art

For several years now, renowned contemporary artist Rirkrit Tiravanija has been teaching his students at Columbia College of the Arts in New York a course titled "Making Without Objects." According to Tiravanija, this undergraduate sculpture course does not teach students to produce anything. It is, for him, a way to explore how a young artist in an art school experiences what is happening in the world at large. Students, as part of the course, have made films for YouTube, done projects on Instagram, and Tiravanija even rented a plot in Second Life, inviting them to create sculptures virtually. He says, "I am more interested in encouraging my students to think conceptually and create things in their heads than in any material." This pedagogic approach is in close alignment with his multidimensional approach to art that emphasizes the conditions and relations art could potentially generate rather than an object-oriented outcome.

In this conversation, Rirkrit Tiravanija will discuss with Srinivas Aditya Mopidevi how his approach to art influences his teaching practice and vice versa.

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Rirkrit Tiravanija in Homage: Queer Lineages on Video at Columbia University's Wallach Art Gallery →

Rirkrit Tiravanija
June 27 - October 19, 2025 | The Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University Lenfest Center of the Arts

Curated by Rattanamol Singh Johal, Homage: Queer Lineages on Video presents works by seven contemporary artists selected from the Akeroyd Collection who use moving images to pay tribute to cultural figures and histories that have been formative, if often (but not always) overlooked. 

The works in the exhibition, all made over the last two decades, explore how lens- and time-based media have enabled artists to articulate desiring and melancholic modes of relationality across generations. 

Intervening in commemorative genres of image making—including portraiture and documentary—through performative acts, selective appropriation, and imaginative staging, these works produce and problematize queer forms of kinship. 

Artists in the exhibition include Dineo Seshee Bopape, Tony Cokes, Carolyn Lazard, Kang Seung Lee, P. Staff, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

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Abraham Cruzvillegas, Danh Vo, Rirkrit Tiravanija at Galerie Chantal Crousel →

Rirkrit Tiravanija
June 13 - July 27, 2025 | Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris

Around La salle de jeux (1998), a historic and participatory piece by Rirkrit Tiravanija, Galerie Chantal Crousel presents a selection of works by Abraham Cruzvillegas and Danh Vo.

La salle de jeux (1998) by Rirkrit Tiravanija evokes a café or clubhouse—social settings where people meet to drink tea, watch television, play cards or share memories. A selection of games, DVDs and CDs is made available, and visitors are invited to take over the exhibition space as they wish. A corkboard, ready to receive any notes or drawings guests feel like posting, further encourages social exchange.

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Angela Bulloch, Jack Goldstein, & Rirkrit Tiravanija in Drawing, Painting, Sculpture, Photography, Film, Video, Sound / The Ringier Collection 1995 – 2025, curated by Beatrix Ruf & Wade Guyton →

Rirkrit Tiravanija
April 13 – October 5, 2025 | The Langen Foundation, Neuss

In Drawing, Painting, Sculpture, Photography, Film, Video, Sound the Langen Foundation in Neuss presents an extensive selection of works from the Swiss Ringier Collection, marking its first major exhibition in Germany. Curated by Beatrix Ruf and artist Wade Guyton, the exhibition features approximately 500 works, offering an overview of one of the most relevant collections of contemporary art. Spanning works from the late 1960s to the present day, it documents Michael Ringier’s 30 years as a collector and key developments in the art world.

Together, these pieces form a rich and layered portrait of Michael Ringier, a Swiss publisher and media entrepreneur, whose collection of art is deeply intertwined with his personal and professional life, as well as the identity of Ringier, a media company active in 19 countries across Europe and Africa. Since 1997, the company has invited international artists to design its annual reports, granting them complete creative freedom. These collaborations have resulted in creative and intelligent explorations of the role of a media publisher today and its engagement with audiences. Renowned artists including Fischli/Weiss, Maurizio Cattelan, and Sylvie Fleury have contributed to these reports, as has Wade Guyton, whose report featured a one-to-one reproduction of one of his paintings printed in high-resolution detail across hundreds of pages. When compiled, these pages recreate the work in its original dimensions.

The exhibition's subversive title highlights how traditional artistic media continues to inspire new interpretations—both by challenging their conventional boundaries and through intentional artistic ambiguity. Drawing, Painting, Sculpture, Photography, Film, Video, Sound re-examines the expectations surrounding what defines a medium and how it shapes our perception. The connection to a global media company like Ringier is evident: from its beginnings in publishing and printing to its evolution into a digitized and diversified corporation, the company has been shaping the relationship between content and medium for over 190 years. Wade Guyton, too, challenges the concept of the medium of painting—whether through his large-format printed works or the strategic use of digital technologies, he questions what a medium can be and how it shapes the art it conveys.

Through these explorations, the exhibition invites viewers to see the collection not merely as a compilation of works but as a dynamic narrative that constantly opens up new perspectives. This approach reflects Michael Ringier’s view of art as a living, integral part of both his entrepreneurial and cultural engagement.

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Artist Rirkrit Tiravanija: "As an artist, I can only make signs."

Rirkrit Tiravanija | Louisiana Channel

“Paying attention now is actually a kind of political act."

Renowned Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija reflects on the role of art in a time of crisis, the importance of questioning authority, and the need for critical engagement with the world around us in repressive times.

For Tiravanija, art serves as a space of doubt and freedom: "Art is always a place where we can have doubt, we're free to think, and we're free to question authority—any kind of authority." He urges viewers to challenge established institutions, including their own assumptions.

“I think now when we're in a place and time where you know there's so much trying to ask for attention, but the attention they're asking for is a kind of is a diversion from reality in a way is a diversion from facts is a diversion from truth,” Tiravanija says.

Tiravanija talks shares his view of the world at the occasion of his most recent work ‘A Million Rabbit Holes (2024), reflecting the events leading up to the US selection in November 2024.

Throughout the discussion, Rirkrit Tiravanija draws on personal observations and global political concerns, highlighting the dangers of uncritical acceptance: "We're coming to a place where the dreams are going to be shattered, there is no more dream."

Tiravanija also reflects on the commodification of art, arguing for a return to its radical roots: "Art has to stop becoming commodified and art has to go out and back into the woods as it was. Or maybe Duchamp, like has said, you know, it's time to go underground."

Despite the challenges ahead, the artist remains hopeful that crisis can be a catalyst for change: "I think we're coming to a big crisis and I I think, and I hope, that crisis is extreme enough to wake people up, to come together, to do things together in opposition to those things that are being set on us."

Rirkrit Tiravanija: A MILLION RABBIT HOLES at Gammel Strand, Copenhagen →

Rirkrit Tiravanija
March 6 - August 31, 2025 | Gammel Strand, Copenhagen

A MILLION RABBIT HOLES is a total installation by Rirkrit Tiravanija reflecting the feverish atmosphere leading up to the U.S. election and the polarization the country is undergoing.

Rirkrit Tiravanija is one of the most influential contemporary artists and a pioneer in participatory contemporary art. His works highlight the connections that unite us across differences — an ever more relevant theme in a time marked by disinformation, alternative truths, and echo chambers.

In this piece, you step into a total installation, drawn from a forestry setting in Upstate New York, subtly addressing the intense polarization the U.S. is currently experiencing.

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Most influential people in 2024 in the contemporary artworld →

Rirkrit Tiravanija | ArtReview

Photo: Daniel Dorsa. Courtesy Rirkrit Tiravanija and David Zwirner

‘My interest is always to break down the distance between what we think [of] as art or high art and what we do in our daily life,’ Tiravanija once told The Korea Herald. During his close-to-40-year engagement with what has been characterised as relational aesthetics, the Thai artist has become known for his participatory events, from cooking pad thai for gallery goers to providing them with ping-pong tables. You’d think it might be tricky to encapsulate such a career in a retrospective, but his MoMA PS1 survey, which closed in March, before moving to LUMA Arles in June, had a go, as did a second retrospective at Gropius Bau, Berlin, which opened in September, serving curry and Turkish coffees, and providing hangout spaces where the interactions are the work.

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Rirkrit Tiravanija’s Latest Show in London Tackles Disillusionment and Political Polarization →

Rirkrit Tiravanija | Observer Magazine

Courtesy of the artist and Pilar Corrias

By Elisa Carollo

For his latest exhibition, “A MILLION RABBIT HOLES,” on view at Pilar Corrias in London during Frieze Art Week, Tiravanija has created an immersive environment that captures the atmosphere of American politics in the run-up to the presidential election next month while also reflecting on the dangerous polarization spreading across countries facing shared geopolitical uncertainties. Ahead of the opening, Observer connected with the artist to discuss the themes that shaped the show and the evolving meaning of “relational art,” with its inherently political dimension.

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Rirkrit Tiravanija: ‘Food is an easy door to go through. It’s something we all do' →

Rirkrit Tiravanija | Financial Times

Rirkrit Tiravanija opening for A LOT OF PEOPLE at MoMA PS1, 2023. Photo by Marissa Alper.

By Caroline Roux

“Food is an easy door to go through,” says the artist of his preferred medium of engagement. “It’s something we all do.” There will be no cooking here, but the influence of “Pad Thai” is all over the show. It is here in a series of woks that have been fetishised as art objets, while upstairs, in an area cordoned off with stacks of art books and catalogues, a man is making Turkish coffee on two electric rings. “It’s the opposite of an espresso,” says the barista, an Iranian drafted in from Luma’s catering staff. It is delicious, not strong but fruity and scented with just the right amount of rose water.

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A Thailand Unified at Its Third National Biennial →

Rirkrit Tiravanija | FRIEZE Magazine

Portrait of Rirkrit Tiravanija. Courtesy of Rirkrit Tiravanija.

By Vipash Purichanont

Assembled by an all-Thai curatorial team, the third Thailand Biennale brilliantly exhibits the rich cultural milieu of the country’s Golden Triangle, near Laos and Myanmar

Titled ‘The Open World’, the third edition of the Thailand Biennale is held in the northern province of Chiang Rai. Assembled by an all-Thai curatorial team, the government-supported biennial is led by artistic directors Rirkrit Tiravanija and Gridthiya Gaweewong in tandem with co-curators Angkrit Ajchariyasophon and Manuporn Luengaram.

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Rirkrit Tiravanija at MoMA PS1 →

Rirkrit Tiravanija | SPIKE Art Magazine

Rirkrit Tiravanija, untitled 2017 (fear eats the soul) (white flag), 2017. Installation view, MoMA PS1, New York, 2023. All images courtesy: MoMA PS1, New York. Photos: Kyle Knodell

By Aodhan Madden

Transcending relational aesthetics, a New York retrospective catalogues the artist’s troubling of Western objecthood and the commodification of “Tiravanija” in a globalized art world.

I was born in neither the right place nor the right time to eat pad thai in a New York gallery. “A LOT OF PEOPLE,” Rirkrit Tiravanija’s first major institutional retrospective, reminds me that this only makes things more interesting. Bringing together four decades of work, from his early “spirit house” sculptures to his more recent text-based works, the exhibition complicates any simple rendering of Tiravanija as a “relational” artist, maintaining a critical tension between ambivalence and anachronism.

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Rirkrit Tiravanija: Can Pad Thai Diplomacy Change the World?

Rirkrit Tiravanija | The New York Times

Rirkrit Tiravanija. untitled 1990 (pad thai). Ingredients for pad thai, utensils, electric woks, and a lot of people. Installation view, Rirkrit Tiravanija: A LOT OF PEOPLE, on view at MoMA PS1 from October 12, 2023 through March 4, 2024. Image courtesy MoMA PS1. Photo: Marissa Alper

By Travis Diehl

“Having been labeled as the cook of the art world,” Rirkrit Tiravanija said, “I think people come to see my work expecting to interact.” Indeed, they expect to eat.

The 62-year-old artist is easily the most influential of the loose cadre that rose to prominence in the early 1990s under the banner of “relational aesthetics” — a kind of installation- and performance-based conceptual work that makes spectators feel like participants. Tiravanija’s “untitled 1990 (pad Thai),” in which he cooked and served noodles in the back room of Paula Allen Gallery, is quintessential.

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Rirkrit Tiravanija with David Ross

Rirkrit Tiravanija | Brooklyn Rail

Portrait of Rirkrit Tiravanija, pencil on paper by Phong H. Bui.

By David Ross

When Rirkrit Tiravanija was invited to participate in the 1995 biennial, David Ross was serving as the museum’s director. Tiravanija’s contribution was aggressive. His installation featured a plywood hut equipped with electric guitars. Anyone could play. Tiravanija’s art is one of activation, of meaning accrued through participation. On the occasion of the Thai artist’s retrospective exhibition at PS1, Ross reconnected with Tiravanija. Over multiple conversations they discussed the evolving role of the artist, how Tiravanija adapts his work for museums while sustaining the life force it’s meant to cultivate, and the empowering role played by educators.

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Rirkrit Tiravanija : NO MORE REALITY →

Rirkrit Tiravanija | Rosanna Albertini

Composite: Rirkrit Tiravanija, untitled (no more reality), 2023, paint on newspaper mounted on linen, 96 x 981 inches, 243.8 x 2491.7 cm.

By Rosanna Albertini

No More Reality and my despair having lost the certainty about what words bring to us. What about thinking? Based on words? Not entirely, our primitive ancestors were thinking and acting before human language broke out from the brain.

Our whole body is a thinking machine: chemical conversation between cells, well organized behavior of organs : a musical score mysterious and impossible to decipher : there is no control on our body’s intelligence. AI is a technological dream. 

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Thailand Biennale, Chiang Rai 2023: The Open World

Rirkrit Tiravanija | e-flux

ArtBridge ChiangRai, Chiang Rai, Thailand, 2023. Photo courtesy of e-flux.

The Office of Contemporary Art and Culture (OCAC), Thailand Ministry of Culture, with the collaboration of The Provincial Government of Chiang Rai, on December 9 at 6pm. unveils the third installment of Thailand Biennale, Chiang Rai 2023 at Chiang Rai International Art Museum (CIAM).

Rirkrit Tiravanija is curating the biennial.

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Pick of the Week: Rirkrit Tiravanija →

Rirkrit Tiravanija | What’s on LA

Rirkrit Tiravanija, untitled 2023 (no more reality (for pp), the news sun, august 16, 2020), 2023, paint on newspaper mounted on linen, 24 x 22 inches, 61 x 55.9 cm.

By Jody Zellen

Rirkrit Tiravanija is an artist whose work has employed unusual and diverse mediums: cooking, staged readings and platforms for socializing. The forms and formats of his installations and presentations are participatory and unconventional, often involving the sharing of meals. That is not to say that Tiravanija does not also make objects and drawings that can hang on a wall or fill a conventional gallery space. In 2020, he covered the walls of The Drawing Center in New York with over 200 demonstration drawings — black and white works on paper derived from photographs of demonstrations published in the International Herald Tribune. World events and the propagation of news has long been an interest of his and for this installation, No More Reality (For PP), he covers the gallery walls with pages of daily American newspapers (collected in 2020).

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Visual Art: Rirkrit Tiravanija - Pad thai for the people: forty years of shaking up the space of art. →

Rirkrit Tiravanija | 4Columns

Rirkrit Tiravanija: A LOT OF PEOPLE, installation view. Courtesy MoMA PS1. Photo: Kyle Knodell. Pictured: untitled 1990 (pad thai), 1990. Mixed media.

By Alex Kitnick

Rirkrit Tiravanija is probably best known as the artist who cooks curry and gives it away for free. And this is not untrue. In 1992 he served bowls of the Thai dish at 303 Gallery in New York—and he has done so, in various locations, any number of times since. While his work, at least from this description, sounds like something that would have to be invented if it didn’t already exist, the way Tiravanija changes the space of art—transforming museums and galleries into third places, more like coffee or barber shops than chilly white cubes—has not been as frequently noted.

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Rirkrit Tiravanija’s Spirited Survey Serves Up Social Interaction and Pad Thai →

Rirkrit Tiravanija | Art in America

Installation view of Rirkrit Tiravanija's untitled 1990 (pad thai), at MoMA PS1, 2023. Photo: Marissa Alper

By Francesca Aton

If you’ve ever stood in a line for a home-cooked meal at an art exhibition, you might be familiar with the work of Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija, who foregrounds interactions between people and their surroundings. Over the years, Tiravanija has served up Turkish coffee, pad Thai, and tea—all of which can be experienced in his exhibition “A Lot of People” at MoMA PS1 in Queens, New York.

In constructing these scenarios, which he refers to as plays, Tiravanija invites museum-goers to participate and consider the ways we interact with one another. As human interaction (or safeguarding against it) came to the forefront during the pandemic, Tiravanija’s plays have only become more relevant. And if they are not enough to satisfy, the show also includes films, drawings, and works on paper.

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Rirkrit Tiravanija’s Bracing MoMA PS1 Survey Is One of the Year’s Best Museum Shows →

Rirkrit Tiravanija | ARTnews

Rirkrit Tiravanija and Nico Dockx, untitled 2011 (erased Rirkrit Tiravanija demonstration drawing), 2011. Photo Fredrik Nilsen/Courtesy the artist and 1301PE, Los Angeles.

By Alex Greenberger

Rirkrit Tiravanija’s lively MoMA PS1 show, a strong candidate for the year’s finest New York museum exhibition, is a challenging experience. This is not because the art included is tough—although it does offer plenty of food for thought (and, in a few cases, for digestion, too)—but because the work on hand calls on viewers to do more than merely see it.

On at least three occasions, visitors are asked to lie down to experience the works. On two, they are given the opportunity to play music—including their own, made via guitars and a drum set, in one installation resembling a recording studio, minus a soundproofed wall. And, for one centrally placed artwork, visitors are even given the opportunity to perform a game of ping-pong; paddles, balls, and a table await players.

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Rirkrit Tiravanija Introduces Precious Okoyomon To His Chaos Menu →

Rirkrit Tiravanija | Interview Magazine

By Precious Okoyomon

This past summer, at a former car dealership in Hancock, New York, the artist Rirkrit Tiravanija spent the weekend cooking up curry for crowds of hungry art-goers and country neighbors. It’s all part of the upstate art gallery and canteen called Unclebrother, which the artist founded with the gallerist Gavin Brown a decade ago. But it’s also in keeping with the spirit of the Thai artist’s radical, interaction-focused, and food-centric artistic universe, which Tiravanija has explored and expanded ever since he served pad thai and curry to audiences in the early 1990s.

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