Rirkrit Tiravanija

Tiravanija is a social practioner and is considered the promoter of 'relational aesthetics'. He creates  social interventions that offers new scope for the exhibiting realms. Recently he had an exhibition in China whereby he offered tofu,  brick-making equipment for home-building (in reference to the country’s hyperactive growth) and bamboo models of skyscrapers filled with birds (‘It’s about choices’, he said at the time) . It is these activities that creates new social, political and creative spaces.

Installations have included the re-organising of  a gallery as a temporary kitchen in which he cooked and chatted with visitors. For his project at the Walker Art Center he articulated the intention:

‘The situation is not about looking at art. It is about being in the space, participating to an activity. The nature of the visit has shifted to emphasize on the gallery as a space for social interaction. The transfer of such activities as cooking, eating or sleeping into the realm of the exhibition space put visitors into very intimate if unexpected contact; the displacement creates an acute awareness of the notion of public and private, the installations function like scientific experiments: the displacement becomes a tool and exposes the way scientific thought processes are constructed. The visitor becomes a participant in that experiment.’ (artist’s text)

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