In Conversation: Rirkrit Tiravanija with Laura Hoptman, The Drawing Center’s Executive Director
June 17, 2020
ViewRirkrit Tiravanija: Demonstration Drawings
September 13 – November 7, 2008
Rirkrit Tiravanija: Demonstration Drawings presents over 200 works on paper from the artist’s ongoing series of commissioned drawings derived from photographs of demonstrations published in the International Herald Tribune. While public protests and mass demonstrations are often associated with the politics of the 1960s, Tiravanija’s ongoing project reconsiders their relevance in today’s political climate. The Demonstration Drawings provide a perspectival view of collective actions, political protests, and popular sovereignty movements worldwide—turning ephemeral images of strife and social conflict into documents of political aspiration.
Curated by João Ribas
Rirkrit Tiravanija
Tiravanija is an Argentina born Thai artist who lives between New York, Berlin, and Chiang Mai and his work carries strains of this nomadic existence, blending and re-combining different cultural contexts. Rather than insisting on a particular reality or truth, his work creates open-ended contexts for people to grapple with these questions themselves. The strength of Tiravanija’s work lies precisely in its ephemerality and the slippery ways it escapes definition; he takes the material of the every-day and re-stages it, allowing the viewer a perspective at once banal and deeply profound about the quickly fleeting nature of life itself.
Tiravanija received his BA from the Ontario College of Art and Design in 1984 and his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1986. From 1985-1986, he participated in the Whitney Independent Study Program. He has received numerous grants and awards, including the Absolut Art Award 2010, the Silpathorn Award by the Ministry of Culture in Thailand (2017), Hugo Boss Prize (2004), and Lucelia Artist Award by the Smithsonian American Art Museum (2003), among others.
Tiravanija lives and works in New York, Berlin, and Chiang Mai.
Installation Views
Credits
The Drawing Center’s 2008–2009 exhibitions and public programs are made possible, in part, with the generous support of the Carnegie Corporation, Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, and with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State agency. Additional support for this exhibition is provided by Hilary and Peter Hatch; Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York; and 1301PE, Los Angeles.
