Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
June 2016
June 4–June 26, 2016
Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija invites viewers to play a relaxing game of ping pong as part of his interactive art installation, Tomorrow is the Question. Using social interaction as his starting point, Tiravanija creates encounters in which the audience is given an active role. In his characteristic, humorous way, he presents his radical views on the established forms of exhibition and their conventions, supplanting them with a more theatrical, social, and even cozy experience, preferably situated outside of traditional exhibition venues and as accessible as possible. According to Tiravanija, “It is not what you see that is important, but what takes place between people.”
Setting up a cluster of ping pong tables on Museumplein, Tiravanija aims to seduce his audience into taking part—to play a game of ping pong or watch others play. Through his work, he stages social and intimate encounters between people. The usually passive public is encouraged to become active participants. Tiravanija has blurred the boundaries between public and private before, serving green curry to gallery visitors, drinking tea with people visiting a reconstruction of his apartment, or giving away printed T-shirts. He also famously built an enormous picnic table for his audience to sit down and collectively complete a jigsaw puzzle. In The Land (1999–ongoing), he invites people to a piece of wasteland in Thailand to realize their personal artistic, agricultural, or social projects. Tiravanija’s mission is to make contemporary art accessible and blur the boundaries between artist and audience. In Tomorrow is the Question, Tiravanija once again challenges the boundaries between art and life.