In 1968 in Addis Ababa, Rirkrit Tiravanija’s father took a photo of the young artist and his sister. As Christopher Wierling’s press release text explains, Rirkrit Tiravanija has used the photo in his work at least twice: for self-portrait (1993), and untitled 1968 (Mr. Spock) (1968/1998). The latter was actually/also the title of a 2023 exhibition in Hamburg surveying Tiravanija’s long collaboration with Klosterfelde Edition. Of the homemade Spock ears, Wierling writes, “Spock was the only extraterrestrial crew member aboard the Starship USS Enterprise—he is described as half-human, half-Vulcan—and it’s precisely his pointy ears that signify his otherness. The artist would later cheekily refer to those pieces he made from modelling clay at age six or seven, as his first sculpture.”
[Update: There is another. Tiravanija made an edition of the photo as untitled (silver Mr. Spock) (1968) in My Kid Could Do That, a 2017 fundraising exhibit of artists’ childhood work. AND THERE WAS A T-SHIRT.]
Tiravanija presents the photo again, as untitled 2025 (2025), in his current show at Chantal Crousel in Paris is titled, IN ALIENS WE TRUST. It is a collaboration of sorts with Danh Vo. He “added elements.” Tiravanija’s photogravure is framed in “McNamara walnut wood,” from trees planted by the US Defense Secretary who drove the Vietnam War, Robert McNamara, which Vo obtained from his son Craig McNamara. The glazing is engraved with the show’s title, IN ALIENS WE TRUST, in the calligraphic script of Phung Vo, Danh’s father.
We all try to live in the present, making more or less sense of the world created by those who came before us. But I honestly do not know what to make of this work. Maybe I should have had my dad write this blog post instead.