The exhibition The House that Jack Built by Rirkrit Tiravanija, presented at Pirelli HangarBicocca, introduce the public to the artist’s thirty years of research into spatial and architectural practices.
The title refers to the famous 19th-century English nursery rhyme of the same name, which has a repetitive and cumulative structure. Contrary to what the title suggests, the rhyme does not recount the story of the house or its builder. Rather, it reveals how the house is indirectly connected to, and interacts with, the people and things around it. By evoking the rhyme, Tiravanija highlights a solid relationship with issues of authorship, a prevalent theme in his work. The artist conceives buildings as platforms, whose value is determined by their use and the people who inhabit them rather than by their form.
With these structures, Tiravanija explores themes related to authorship and reinterprets modernist icons by altering their original function through collective activation and placing them in radically different contexts. Like cinematic sequences unfolding throughout the exhibition, the show will present a succession of scenarios in which visitors become protagonists.