Rirkrit Tiravanija Turns Thai Fishing Boats Into Dining Tables in Paris

Two stainless steel tables shaped like traditional Thai fishing boats will seat up to 100 guests during Art Basel Paris 2026, running October 18 to 25. Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija designed them for Dalad's, a temporary restaurant from hospitality platform We Are Ona, installed at a secret location near Place de l'Étoile.

The elongated structures do double duty: they're dining tables and working kitchens at once. Integrated seating and steam pots let chefs prepare and serve food directly in front of guests, dissolving the wall that normally separates a kitchen from a dining room. Tiravanija developed the concept with chef Dalad Kambhu and We Are Ona founder Luca Pronzato.

Where do the boats come from?

The form references Thailand's waterway food culture. Tiravanija recalls running to the pier in Bangkok to buy boat noodle soup from vendors who cooked and sold their dishes directly from the water. Boats there operate as places of exchange as much as means of transport, and that memory shaped the design.

'I think the form itself is both a vehicle and a platform,' the artist explains.

Pronzato points to a second reference: the Thai practice of giving old fishing boats a second life as floating restaurants. 'Rather than creating a traditional dining room with individual tables and a hidden kitchen, the boats become the structural backbone of the installation,' he says. 'The integrated steam pods bring the cooking directly into the long communal tables, dissolving the boundary between the kitchen and the dining room.'

The two modular structures are built from stainless steel, translating a familiar fishing-boat silhouette into a contemporary setting for collective dining. Guests watch the chefs work from their seats.

Who is cooking?

Dalad's marks the debut of a new hospitality project by Kambhu and Pronzato, built around contemporary Thai cuisine and the act of sharing food. It's Kambhu's third collaboration with We Are Ona, after earlier culinary experiences with designers Harry Nuriev and Marc Leschelier.

Kambhu, who is Thai-American and raised in Bangkok, opened Kin Dee in Berlin in 2017. The restaurant earned a Michelin star in 2019 for her interpretation of Thai cuisine. At Dalad's she pairs traditional Thai flavors and techniques with seasonal, locally available ingredients — a four-course lunch and an eight-course dinner, served straight from the installation.

The menu tests a question she and Tiravanija, longtime friends, have discussed for years: what it means to cook Thai food where its traditional ingredients don't exist.

'So it's like finding authenticity, which is your own, which is yourself, in a foreign place,' Tiravanija says.

Is it a restaurant or an artwork?

We Are Ona, founded by Pronzato in 2019, builds temporary culinary experiences that connect gastronomy with art, architecture and design, working with figures including Carsten Höller, Cristina Celestino and Sabine Marcelis. The Tiravanija collaboration sits squarely in the artist's own practice, which has long challenged exhibition formats through everyday activities like cooking and eating.

'For me, artworks are not simply objects to be observed; they are experiences to be lived,' Pronzato says.

The tables provide the physical frame, but guests complete the work. The installation activates through food preparation, the presence of diners, and the conversations that emerge around the communal tables — so the experience changes with every gathering. References to Thai culture and the collaborators' personal histories run from the recipes to the tableware and spatial arrangement.

As Tiravanija puts it: 'a beautiful meal with friends and even strangers is a beautiful work of art.' After Paris, the modular boat-structures could plausibly sail elsewhere — but the project's stated horizon is simpler: prove that a kitchen can be the main event.

Project info:

• Name: Dalad's – We Are Ona x Rirkrit Tiravanija
• Artist: Rirkrit Tiravanija
• Designer: Luca Pronzato
• Chef: Dalad Kambhu
• Concept: We Are Ona
• Location: Paris, France