Learning Specialist, Marco Hermosillo: This is a big work. Let’s take some time to look at it from far away…and then close up.
I’m noticing some details that look like they come from a map, and also the names of cities like São Paulo in Brazil and Hamburg in Germany. What other details do you notice?
Artist, Rirkrit Tiravanija: It’s not something that you could passively look at. You actually have to be quite active. You actually have to move in and out of it. You have to try to decode it. Or find your own line.
Marco Hermosillo: That was Rirkrit Tiravanija, the artist who made this work. He grew up between Argentina, Thailand, Ethiopia, and Canada.
Let’s focus on the center of the work.
Rirkrit Tiravanija: The spine of the work is my three passports. What I did was to go through each book and to re-trace the visas or the stamps, or the place and the location, what happened to me at that moment, when and how, and what I was doing.
Each of them are different periods of life. The first one has a lot of stories about coming to America, or trying to stay in America. The last one is kind of like trying to leave America [laughs], or something. Or not worrying anymore about having to be anywhere in a sense.
Marco Hermosillo: Beneath some of his passports, the artist has also written reflections about how it felt to cross the borders of different countries.
Rirkrit Tiravanija: There’s this idea that the world is globalized and we are more in touch with the other. I mean, there’s a lot of barriers [Laughs]. It’s really about passages and finding ways around the barrier.
Marco Hermosillo: Tiravanija wants us to think about this idea of borders. Where do they come from? Who makes them? How can they act as barriers between us?