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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contact: Maureen Dixon
415.321.1307; mdixon@ybca.org
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Presents
A Special Curatorial Project with Rirkrit Tiravanija:
The Way Things Go
February 13 – May 24, 2015
Opening Night Party: Friday, February 13, 2015, 6-10 p.m.,
YBCA Grand Lobby and Downstairs Galleries
$12 in Advance / $15 at the Door / YBCA Member and YBCA:You FREE
Gallery Admission: $10 / Senior, Teacher, Student: $8 /
YBCA Member and YBCA:You FREE
YBCA, 701 Mission Street, San Francisco, Calif. 94103
415.978.2787; www.ybca.org
SAN FRANCISCO – (December 18, 2014) A Special Curatorial Project with Rirkrit Tiravanija:
The Way Things Go uncovers narratives, reveals personal stories, and shares vignettes that
lead to a larger understanding of migration in the production of material culture. Curated by
contemporary artist Rirkrit Tiravanija, the exhibition investigates the origins and subsequent
journeys of “things,” in particular food, and its function as a lubricant for social exchange.
Tiravanija invited artists from Asia and Europe, as well as from the San Francisco Bay Area, to
contribute works related to the circulation and anthropology of seeds, plants, food, recipes and
related materials of kitchen culture that have migrated across regions and time. Featuring 13
artists and a wide range of work, from mixed-media installations to film, video, archive-oriented
art, The Way Things Go explores how personal effects, gourds, seeds, a recipe and sugar all
yield stories that go beyond each artist’s personal intention, and creates a larger story of
interwoven meanings embedded in cultural geography and spatial history.
In Tiravanija’s artworks, “things” often function as props for visitors to create something of their
own, creating cultural products, which in turn, foster social production, and demonstrate how
origins, journeys and the stories that surround them are catalysts for bringing people into a more
intimate understanding of themselves and the interdependence of cultures. In the exhibition,
featured artists share personal and focused stories that open up to larger scenes of human
interaction and engagement by redrawing boundaries of trade and labor, colonization, political
affiliation and war—all of which have a profound impact on vernacular, local and indigenous
experiences. Participating artists are: Maria Thereza Alves, Michael Arcega, Lonnie van
Brummelen and Siebren de Haan, Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Camille Henrot, Chihiro
Minato, Luc Moullett, the National Bitter Melon Council, Pratchaya Phinthong, Arin
Rungjang, Thasnai Sethaseree, Shimabuku, and SUPERFLEX with the Propeller Group.
Thasnai Sethaseree’s make it like home . . . anywhere? (2002–14) is a meditation on personal
effects and positive memories of home that Thai immigrants in Chicago shared with the artist.
Sethaseree translated these materials into detailed drawings, paintings, and sculptures that
capture the spirit of the feeling between owner and object. Chihiro Minato’s Museum of Gourd
(2012–ongoing), a collaboration with artists, hobbyists, and an archivist, is an exegesis on a
natural product that has a long lineage of varied uses. Maria Thereza Alves has spent years
considering how seeds migrate from one region to another and the consequences of their
journeys and resettlements. For the YBCA presentation of the Museum of Gourd local artists
Terri Friedman and Victoria Wagner contribute new gourd-inspired works, and the California
Gourd Society presents a selection of gourd art. For Wake in Guangzhou: The History of the
Earth (2008), she transported dirt from the Liwan district in Guangzhou to the contemporary art
museum there, exposing previously buried and dormant seeds, and allowing them to germinate
in order to create a monument garden—presented in this exhibition as a journey in a wall
installation.
Arin Rungjang’s video and sculpture Golden Teardrop (2013) reassembles the fragmented
layers of the history of Thong Yod, a common Thai dessert. Engaging the disjunctive layers of
private and public dialogues, he traces the dessert through colonialism, trade routes, and
personal journeys to its origins in Portugal. A contemporary oral history by a Japanese woman
living in Thailand is overlaid onto this history to complete its complex portrait. Lonnie van
2 Brummelen and Siebren de Haan’s installation Monument of Sugar (2007), which is comprised
of a 16-mm film essay and 304 blocks of sugar, involved the importation of 1,000 euro worth of
sugar as minimalist sculptural blocks. Circumventing international trade regulations by
converting a valuable commodity (sugar) into a work of art, their project exposes the complex
sugar trade between the European Union and other countries while also exploring the larger
intersection of social and political issues with artistic and aesthetic practices.
Tiravanija has selected works that demonstrate the complexity of the global circulation of people
and goods. Underlying Tiravanija’s attitude toward mobility, chance, and serendipity is his 3
shared sensibility with a video by Peter Fischli and David Weiss included in the exhibition, The
Way Things Go (1987), which he has appropriated as the title of the show.
Various public programs (listed below)—including lectures at YBCA, UC Berkeley, the San
Francisco Art Institute, and Headlands Center for the Arts, where Tiravanija is a 2015 Artist in
Residence—will accompany the exhibition. The Way Things Go is organized in collaboration
with Betti-Sue Hertz, Director of Visual Arts at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
About the Artist
Rirkrit Tiravanija was born in Buenos Aires in 1961 and raised in Thailand, Ethiopia and
Canada. He studied at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto (1980–84), the Banff Center School
of Fine Arts (1984), the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1984–86), and the Whitney
Independent Study Program in New York (1985–86). He has had numerous solo exhibitions,
including at Tate Modern, London (2013); Espace 13/16, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2012);
Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Germany (2010); Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany (2009); CAC
Málaga, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Spain (2009); the Drawing Center, New York (2008);
the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2005); Serpentine Gallery, London (2005);
Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris/ARC, Paris (2005); and the Museum Boijmans van
Beuningen, Rotterdam, the Netherlands (2004); among others. He has participated in group
exhibitions at the National Museum of Norway, Oslo (2014); Centre Pompidou-Metz, France
(2014); the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2014); the 30th Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts,
Slovenia (2013); the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Montpellier, France (2013); the Jewish
Museum, Moscow (2013); the 9th Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2012); La Triennale, Palais
de Tokyo, Paris (2012); Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia (2010); the New Museum,
New York (2010); the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston (2009); the Museum of Modern Art,
Warsaw, Poland (2009); and the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2009); among many others.
Public Programs
Fear Eats the Soul
Friday, February 20, 2015; 7:30 p.m.
San Francisco Art Institute Lecture Hall, 800 Chestnut Street, San Francisco/FREE
Rirkrit Tiravanija produces installations that invite social engagement and are activated by
viewers’ interactions. Tiravanija is one of the most important figures of Relational Aesthetics, a
practice in which the audience is regarded as a community, and the artwork is experienced as a
shared encounter. He is the recipient of the prestigious Hugo Boss Prize, and was co-curator
of Utopia Station at the 50th Venice Biennale. Tiravanija’s long-term project, since 1998, is a
hybrid place for art, design, advocacy, and solidarity with local rice farmers in a village near
Chiang Mai, Thailand.
Local Source: Rirkrit Tiravanija
Sunday, February 22, 2015; 6:30 p.m.
Headlands Center for the Arts, 944 Simmonds Rd, Sausalito, CA
3 Internationally acclaimed artist and 2015 Headlands Artist in Residence Rirkrit Tiravanija, known
for his groundbreaking contributions in the realm of social practice, will orchestrate a shared
meal with a mixed menu based on what is fresh and locally available. As we eat together,
Tiravanija will talk about various processes and projects that blur the line between artist and
viewer, and ask how an artwork might leave a lasting impression when its medium is something
as finite as food. Setting the table in Headlands’ historic Mess Hall—renovated by artist Ann
Hamilton—this gathering invites visitors to engage with art in an exceptionally sociable way.
The Way Things Go
Monday, February 23, 7:30-9 p.m.
The David Brower Center, Berkeley CA, UC Berkeley Campus, Berkeley, CA/FREE
This lecture, entitled The Way Things Go, is being developed in partnership with the UC
Berkeley Arts Research Center, UC Berkeley Center for New Media and UC Berkeley Art
Practice Lecture Series. Rirkrit Tiravanija will speak about the principles and ideas that
underscore A Special Curatorial Project with Rirkrit Tiravanija: The Way Things Go.
About Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA), located in San Francisco's Yerba Buena cultural
district, is one of the nation's leading multidisciplinary contemporary arts centers. With a belief
that contemporary art is at the heart of community life, YBCA brings audiences and artists of all
backgrounds together to express and experience creativity. The organization is known for
nurturing emerging artists at the forefront of their fields and presenting works that blend art
forms and explore the events and ideas of our time. As part of its commitment to the San
Francisco Bay Area, YBCA supports the local arts community and reflects the region's diversity
of people and thought through its arts and public programming.
YBCA presents programming year-round in the Forum, Screening Room, Galleries and the
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater. For tickets and information, call 415.978.ARTS (2787).
FUNDING
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is grateful to the City of San Francisco for its ongoing support.
YBCA Exhibitions 14-15 are made possible in part by: Mike Wilkins and Sheila Duignan,
Meridee Moore and Kevin King, the Creative Ventures Council, and members of Yerba Buena
Center for the Arts.
YBCA’s programs 14-15 are made possible in part by Adobe and Gaia Fund.
Free First Tuesdays are underwritten by Directors Forum Members.
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