A narrative of time and space through art

BORN in Buenos Aires to a diplomat father and an oral surgeon mother, Rirkrit Tiravanija, 53, grew up primarily in Thailand, Ethiopia and Canada. He now splits his time between Chiang Mai, New York and Berlin - when he's not flying from one exhibition opening to another residency around the world.

Ah, one of those Third Culture kids who are raised outside of their parents' culture and a truly global artist, one nods knowingly. "No, I see myself as an illegal alien actually," he quips. "There's always that sense that one day I'll be stopped from going into a country . . . that they'll see me as an illegal alien, especially in the United States."

He also grapples with being on the fringes of this generation of computer-savvy kids - many of them his students - who have the world at their fingertips. "In my generation, we had to learn how to use the computer. But kids nowadays, it comes naturally to them. In my day, I had to go to the library to look up stuff. Today, they don't even leave th…