20 Facts About Rirkrit Tiravanija

Rirkrit Tiravanija was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1961.

The son of a Thai diplomat and an oral surgeon, Tiravanija was born in Buenos Aires in 1961 and was raised in Thailand, Ethiopia, and Canada.

Rirkrit Tiravanija learned English at an international school in Ethiopia before being sent to a Catholic school back home in Thailand, where his grandmother operated a garden restaurant.

Rirkrit Tiravanija used a westernized recipe that was being popularized by an expat Englishwoman who had written a cookbook after visiting Bangkok; the recipe substituted ketchup for tamarind paste, and the meal was prepared in a West Bend wok, a then-new appliance.

Rirkrit Tiravanija later recreated the installation in 2007 at the David Zwirner Gallery in Chelsea using the original elements and renaming the work Untitled.

Rirkrit Tiravanija painted the words " Ne Travaillez Jamais" on the wall, a phrase lifted from the May 1968, protest riots in Paris.

When Rirkrit Tiravanija does make objects, they are most often multiples and ephemera connected with exhibitions.

Since the early 1990s, Rirkrit Tiravanija has published multiples in the form of backpacks, cooking utensils, and maps as part of his practice.

In 1997 Rirkrit Tiravanija began an engagement with modernist architecture when he installed in the Museum of Modern Art's sculpture garden Untitled: 1997, a child-size version of Philip Johnson's Glass House.

Le Corbusier's barge was designed for the Salvation Army literally as a floating asylum meant to provide temporary overnight shelter for vagrants wandering the streets of Paris; Rirkrit Tiravanija's barge, constructed in Chiang Mai, was to serve as a pavilion that houses both political T-shirts designed by the artist, and others that have been collected from all over the world.

Alongside Hans Ulrich Obrist and Philippe Parreno, Rirkrit Tiravanija staged the opera Il Tempo del postino with the participation of a number of leading contemporary visual artists, first unveiled at the Manchester International Festival in 2007 and later at Art Basel fair in an expanded form in 2009.

The work presents filmic portraits of twelve artists, all chosen by Rirkrit Tiravanija, that belong to the same generation as him, that rose to critical attention in the 1990s.

Rirkrit Tiravanija was the co-curator of the Station Utopia project at the 2003 Venice Biennale together with Hans Ulrich Obrist and Molly Nesbit.

Rirkrit Tiravanija is part of a collective alternative space called Gallery VER located in Bangkok.

Rirkrit Tiravanija maintains his primary residence and studio in Chiang Mai.

In 2009, Rirkrit Tiravanija was a member of a think tank established to define the model and architecture of the Guggenheim Urdaibai, an annex for the existing Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.

Rirkrit Tiravanija is a Professor of Professional Practice in Visual Arts in the Faculty of the Arts at Columbia University.

Rirkrit Tiravanija's work has been presented widely at museums and galleries throughout the world including solo exhibitions at the Drawing Center, New York ; Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris ; Serpentine Gallery, London ; Galerie fur Zeitgenossische Kunst, Leipzig ; Secession, Vienna ; Portikus, Frankfurt ; Center for Contemporary Art, Kitakyushu, Japan ; Los Angeles County Museum of Art ; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Rirkrit Tiravanija had a retrospective exhibition at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam that then was presented in Paris and London.

Rirkrit Tiravanija has participated in such notable group exhibitions as the Sharjah Biennial 8, United Arab Emirates ; 27th Sao Paulo Biennial, Brazil ; Whitney Biennial 2006: Day for Night, New York City ; the 50th Venice Biennale ; and Skulptur Projekte Munster.