Rirkrit Tiravanija in Milano

the colorful but horribly lit interior of a childsized house with yellow ikea play table and chairs, blue scalloped wallpaper, and a couple of stuffed animals on the yellow table is the interior of an artwork by rirkrit tiravanija in sweden in 1995. beyond a row of windows, actual adults mill about, indicating the scale of the space, and the fact that it's inside a museum space of some kind. this photo is from the pirelli hangar, another art space where this house will be installed, this time in milan

The Pirelli Hangar Bicocca in BF industrial Milan [but in a different BF industrial Milan from the Fondazione Prada, so plan accordingly] is about to open a show of Rirkrit Tiravanija’s architectural projects.

The pic above is from Untitled, 1995, which was a half-scale version of a modernist house by Sigurd Lewerentz which Tiravanija built at the Rooseum in Malmö. MoMA’s 1997 caption described the interior decorations as “by the children of the Storken day care center ages 5-7,” but that was clearly preceded by a trip to Ikea.

eight swedish 5-7 year olds hang out in front of or in the second floor window of a diminutive modernist box-style house, created at half-scale in a gallery in malmo in 1995. the house is clad in unfinished pine and the four kids outside, at least, are clad in matching aprons with bears on them. they're all presumably taking a break from decorating the inside of the house as part of rirkrit tiravanija's art project. the caption under the photo says as much, as this whole thing is screenshot from a 1997 moma brochure
Collaborators: photo of Rirkrit’s 1995 Malmö installation from the brochure for his 1997 MoMA Project

Which makes Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad, whose connections to the nazis were first disclosed in 1994, a more tangential nazi than Philip Johnson, who designed both the Glass House Tiravanija replicated at half-scale and MoMA’s sculpture garden where he put it, but anyway. I’m excited to see the show.

Rirkrit Tiravanija, The house that Jack built, 26 mar – 26 jul 2026 [pirellihangarbicocca.org]
Projects 78: Rirkrit Tiravanija [moma.org]
Previously, related: Transactional Aesthetics, or the highly collectible Rirkrit Tiravanija