The Drawing Center will present Rirkrit Tiravanija: Demonstration Drawings, in the Main Gallery. This exhibition, featuring approximately 200 works on paper, will be the first U.S. museum exhibition of the artist’s ongoing series of commissioned drawings derived from photographs of demonstrations published in the International Herald Tribune.

While public protests and mass demonstrations are often associated with the leftist politics of the 1960s, Tiravanija’s project reconsiders their relevance in today’s political climate. For the Demonstration Drawings, Tiravanija has commissioned Thai artists, many of them former students, to create a series of photorealistic pencil drawings depicting multifarious responses to power, oppression, and global capital. Tiravanija’s drawings translate photojournalist depictions of acts of political spontaneity into a medium itself characterized by immediacy—turning ephemeral images of strife and social conflict into documents of political aspiration.

By providing a perspectival view of collective actions, political protests, and popular sovereignty movements worldwide, the Demonstration Drawings confront commonly-held assumptions about globalization, democratic mass movements, and ongoing forms of resistance to economic liberalism. This exhibition is curated by João Ribas.