Michael Rakowitz - Public Lecture and Artist Talk

Public lecture and artist talk with Michael Rakowitz, Iraqi-American artist whose projects grapple with the history of Iraq, its diaspora, and the broader Middle East. Projects such as The invisible enemy should not exist (2007-ongoing) and Enemy Kitchen (2003—ongoing), contend with the aftermath of the US invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq in 2003.

“Over the years Rakowitz has received great acclaim for projects that push gestures of ostranenie, or estrangement, to operatic dimensions: In New York he once served an Iraqi-inspired dish on plates looted from Saddam Hussein’s palaces (Spoils, 2011), and for Documenta 13 he presented copies of books that were burned in the Fridericianum in Kassel during World War II; the copies were carved from travertine collected in the hills of Bamiyan, Afghanistan, where the Taliban blew up two massive sixth-century sand- stone Buddhas in 2001 (What Dust Will Rise?, 2012).

For Rakowitz, the practice of, lifting an object or material from its given context and embedding it in an unexpected setting or giving it an unwonted purpose lends itself to a multidimensional confrontation that is powerful not only for the highly politicized and controversial terms of this dislocation but also for foregrounding destruction as the defining motif in the history of civilizations.” - Gökcan Demirkazık, Artforum review January 2019

Michael Rakowitz has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions including a major survey of his practice this year at Whitechapel Gallery, London, Castello di Rivoll, Turin, and Malmö Konsthall. He has been featured in group exhibitions including the 14th Istanbul Biennial; Yokohama Trienniale, Japan; and Documenta 13, Kassel, Germany. He recently completed the Fourth Plinth commission in London's Trafalgar Square. Rakowitz is Professor of Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois.