To mark the publication of Thomas Hirschhorn: From Graphic Design to Art (MIT Press, 2025), American art historian Lisa Lee talks to the artist about the origins of his work.
"Lisa Lee captured the true nature of my Parisian experience after my arrival in 1983. Determined to pursue graphic design, but confronted with the challenges of time, the world, and reality, I realized that I had to reverse my thinking: art became the mission to accomplish, far beyond graphic design. [..] She ingeniously structured her book into three significant chapters: The Leaf, The Wall, The Street, showing how my decision to place my work within the field of art history takes a stand, summarizing the false question of “being an artist or not,” and definitively opening up the only question that matters: what to do—today—in the field of art?
Lisa Lee's research on my early work and its culmination in a form that is unique to me led me to my current work: “My Atlas,” which is the story of my journey in art, drawn precisely from my own history, without any text." Thomas Hirschhorn, 2025
Thomas Hirschhorn was born in Bern (Switzerland) in 1957. He studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich from 1978 to 1983, before moving to Paris in 1983, where he has lived ever since.
His work has been shown in numerous institutions, galleries, and international exhibitions.
His recent solo exhibitions include: Fake It, Fake It, Till you Fake It, Gladstone Gallery, New York (2024), LAST CHANCE: What can we learn from History of Art, for today’s understanding?, Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris (2024), Laboratoire des Monuments tombés à l’Artothèque, Caen (2025).
Thomas Hirschhorn affirms his commitment to a non-exclusive audience in each of his exhibitions, as evidenced by his numerous projects (more than 78) carried out in public spaces, the most recent of which are Sense of Safety. Exhibition, Yermilov Centre, Kharkiv, Ukraine (2024) and Art Shelter, Art-Station-Dubulti, Jurmala, Riga, Latvia (2022). His projects, designed in line with his “Presence and Production” policy and involving local collaborations, are proof of this commitment.
Selections of his writings have been published by MIT Press: Critical Laboratory: The Writings of Thomas Hirschhorn (2013), and by Macula: Une volonté de faire, Thomas Hirschhorn (2015) and Thomas Hirchhorn, Quand les faibles se prennent pour des forts (2024).
Thomas Hirschhorn has received several awards, including the Marcel Duchamp Prize (2000) and the Meret Oppenheim Prize (2018).
Lisa Lee is an associate professor of art history at Emory University. She specializes in sculpture, collage, and assemblage practices in European and American contexts. She is the author of Thomas Hirschhorn from Graphic Design to Art (MIT Press, 2025) and co-editor, with Hal Foster, of Critical Laboratory: The Writings of Thomas Hirschhorn (MIT Press, 2013). She previously wrote Isa Genzken: Sculpture as World Receiver (University of Chicago Press, 2017) and edited Isa Genzken in the October Files series (MIT Press, 2015). Her essays and articles have been published in October, Oxford Art Journal, and in exhibition catalogs for MoMA, MAXXI, and Fondazione Generali, among others. Lisa Lee is currently investigating the rhetorical uses of sculptural and architectural proportions, inspired by Joseph Beuys' provocation to “raise the Berlin Wall by five centimeters.”
Photo credits: Thomas Hirschhorn at the Robert Walser-Sculpture exhibition, Biel/Bienne, 2019 © Enrique Munoz Garcia / Portrait of Lisa Lee © Joy Osmanski
