Thai in origin, Rirkrit Tiravanija was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1961. He returned to Thailand with his family when he was three and attended high school in Bangkok. He then studied at the Ontario School of Art in Toronto, the Banff Center School of Fine Arts, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Whitney Independent Studies program in New York. Always on the move, the artist currently divides his time between New York, Berlin and Chiangmai, Thailand.

Best known for instigating situations in projects that invite the general public to interact socially in museum or gallery environments, Tiravanija has developed significant exhibitions for the Guggenheim Museum, The Museum of Modern Art New York, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Portikus, Frankfurt; and the Secession, Vienna; Sydney Biennale, Yokohama Triennale and Venice Biennale, to name but a few from an extensive list of invitations and solo shows in Asia, Europe, and North America. Few of his prestigious honors include the Hugo Boss Prize (2004) as well as the Benesse Prize (2003), Lucelia Artist Award (2003), Central Kunst Prize (1996) and a National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artist Fellowship.

And though cooking and preparing meals remains a strong forte in his expression in the last 2 decades, the artist hasn't actually been cooking much in most of his expositions for a while, a fact many outside the visual art field tend not to realize. He prefers to collaborate with different artists in simultaneous projects, and has created a variety of participatory structures in such a way that the actions of viewers comprise the artwork itself. In other words, Rirkrit’s art does not, strictly speaking, belong to him; it is not an object that anyone can possess. In his own words, the artist wants to "cut lose the phenomenon of the object, to give up materiality and to focus on the spirit of matter."

Since 2000, together with co-founder, artist Kamin Lertchaiprasert, Tiravanija has also been active in THE LAND, an ongoing and self-sustaining project located in Chiangmai, Northern Thailand where a community of artists, farmers, students and just about any interested individuals conduct everyday activities amongst the rice paddies, vegetable fields, water buffalos and surrounding environment, the value of which is counted as much in terms of utility as anything else.

Often times, as a globe-trotter, the constant traveling and adapting to different languages and customs, requires the artist to negotiate between cultures and striking up interactions etc. It is the potential cross-cultural journeys that allow the nomadic artist to create a ‘living process’ to unfold between art and life; exist in between spaces of dialogue between artist and viewer and between everyday relationships and chance. More significantly, championing a meeting point of ideas and information. A firm belief he espouses in his projects till today and beyond.