Thomas Hirschhorn

Thomas Hirschhorn (b. 1957, Bern, Switzerland) is a Swiss artist who lives and works in Paris. He studied at the Schule für Gestaltung in Zurich from 1978 to 1983 and subsequently worked as a graphic designer before establishing himself as an artist in Paris in the late 1980s. His practice — working primarily with cheap, perishable materials (cardboard, aluminum foil, packing tape, photocopies, printed matter) — produces large-scale installations, monuments, and temporary public structures that address the relationship between art, politics, and society.

He is known for his Monuments series, dedicated to thinkers whose work he finds essential and undervalued: Spinoza Monument (Amsterdam, 1999), Deleuze Monument (Avignon, 2000), Bataille Monument (Kassel, documenta 11, 2002), and Gramsci Monument (New York, 2013), the last a temporary community center built in and with the residents of a housing project in the Bronx. After his Simone Weil-Memorial at Steirischer Herbst in Graz (2021), he imagined the Pavillon Simone Weil (Geneva, Pavillon Sicli, 2026), a 78-day participatory installation built collectively with residents of the city. These projects maintain his principle that art must go to where it is not expected and engage directly with populations outside the gallery. His Precarious Theatre and Unlimited Responsibility concepts situate the artist's commitment in relation to the most vulnerable and most overlooked.

He has participated in documenta multiple times and exhibited at the Kunsthalle Zürich, the Centre Pompidou, the Palais de Tokyo, and major institutions internationally.