This website uses cookies to help us give you the best experience when you visit our website. By continuing to use this website, you consent to our use of these cookies.
Artists’ assistants are omnipresent in the art business. Yet, as a rule, they are all but invisible. Ever nameless they disappear from view in artists’ studios; their work is absorbed into their employers’ production and their independent creative participation in the works is subsumed by the artistic “brand” they have helped to form. However, things do seem to be changing. Not only has “Artist’s Assistant” become a recognized occupation, but assistants are starting to emerge from their anonymity and raising their profiles as artists in their own right. Hans-Jürgen Hafner sketches out the situation.
He has become famous as a »cooking artist« – a misunderstanding that has almost concealed the real questions raised by his work for the past twenty years. Via email, Raimar Stange spoke with Rirkrit Tiravanija about this subject and the always-surprising way that the artist has read Western culture against the cultural attitudes of his homeland, Thailand.
