From Ping Pong to Pad Thai, Rirkrit Tiravanija’s Art Is All About People

In February 1990, guests arrived at New York City’s Paula Allen Gallery anticipating a run-of-the-mill gallery opening. Instead, they found Rirkrit Tiravanija cooking pad thai. Amid the sizzling woks and the clatter of utensils, the ingredient list was incomplete without the final, most crucial component—a lot of people. Unwittingly, diners at the gallery became active participants in Tiravanija’s untitled 1990 (pad thai) (1990)—a performance piece challenging the boundaries between art and experience.

Under the curatorial direction of Ruba Katrib and Yasmil Raymond, Tiravanija’s first U.S. survey, “A Lot of People,” is more than a retrospective—it’s an invitation. On view at MoMA PS1 until March 4, 2024, the exhibition invites the viewer to become an integral part of the artist’s four decades of work. The show features over 100 works spanning Tiravanija’s eclectic career, covering everything from his early experiments in installation to newly produced “plays” of his well-known participatory works.

Born in Buenos Aires in 1961, Tiravanija grew up in Thailand, Ethiopia, and Canada. His work, much like his itinerant upbringing, crosses boundaries—between installation, sculpture, and performance. However, a common thread runs through it all: the notion of shared experience. This ethos is evident in participatory works like untitled 1993 (café deutschland) (1993), in which guests are served Turkish coffee from a bar in the museum. His simple yet radical redefinition of art engages the viewer with the environment surrounding the work—a subversion of typical museum etiquette. Above all, the show details Tiravanija’s career-long focus on art that doesn’t produce objects, but rather creates more valuable relationships.

Tiravanija is frequently associated with relational aesthetics, a movement that emerged in the 1990s that grounded art in human interactions and social contexts. In the exhibition, he presents everyday items—from cooking materials and leftover food to camping gear. These otherwise quotidian items are imbued with meaning, which is created not just from the items themselves but from people’s interactions with them. Much like Marcel Duchamp, who revolutionized the art world by presenting everyday readymades as art, Tiravanija questions our preconceptions about what art can be. He transforms galleries into spaces for communal activity, as in untitled 2021 (mañana es la cuestión) (2021), a ping-pong table near the museum’s entrance where visitors can play.

For untitled 1991 (tom ka soup) (1991), it wasn’t pad thai but tom kha soup that Tiravanija cooked for gallery visitors. That piece, acquired by the Whitney Museum, contains the artist’s stipulations to display the original objects, including instructions to cook tom kha soup. For the current exhibit, MoMA PS1 staff and the curators followed these instructions and cooked the soup using the cookware from the original installation. The result is an artwork in flux; while some components will return to the Whitney, others may be discarded, leaving room for the piece to change.

According to the curators, this installation, like much of the exhibit, is a confrontation of authenticity. “We have been marching in the long march for freedom—since Duchamp—to debunk this concept of authenticity,” co-curator Raymond said during a press preview. “When Rirkrit does something like this… [he] is trying to pick up on some of that legacy from Duchamp, from the [avant-garde mid-century group] Situationist International, from Fluxus, and to remind us that these value systems of authenticity that we claim in art are no longer needed.”

In Tiravanija’s art practice, where the line between art and life blurs, documentation emerges as both vital and imprecise. His instructions and recipes are an impetus for involvement, not an exact science that produces the same results every time.

“For those interactive works, it’s not too predetermined what they are,” said co-curator Katrib. “You can’t replicate it, and that’s why he’s doing these plays.” At the exhibition, Tiravanija’s work is revitalized, simultaneously looking back at his life’s work and inviting new interpretations. “We can’t go back to the ’90s and experience his work in the same way. He’s trying to figure out a way to bring some of whatever was happening originally, but also, making it new and for this context,” Katrib added.

These plays, enacted by Tiravanija’s current and former students from Columbia University, are scheduled to run on Fridays and Saturdays throughout the MoMA PS1 show’s run. Tracing the artist’s entire career, the performances will take place in chronological order, starting with untitled 1990 (pad thai) (1990), and ending with untitled 2011 (t-shirt, no t-shirt) (2011), in which visitors are invited into an atelier-style space to silkscreen print on clothing.

For the visitor, “A Lot of People” compiles experiences. At its heart, Tiravanija’s work rejects the idea of permanence and embraces change—a concept embodied by untitled 2005 (passport no. 2) (2005), a hand-drawn facsimile of the artist’s passport. In his replica, he studies the changes in life by adding pages to the ever-evolving artwork. The passport is diaristic and an unassuming cornerstone of the entire exhibition.