In his work, Michael Rakowitz addresses history, the official memory apparatus, and the social and geopolitical conflicts imbued in urban space and everyday objects. The artist constitutes a certain “material etymology” by sustaining an investigative methodology on the specific contingencies of each of his projects, which uncovers historical, biographical, and cultural events that result in complex imbrications of image, language, and times.

Having Iraqi-Jewish background, Rakowitz’s work proposes reappearances that stress the contradictions between the presumed rationality and the violence of the Western civilizational model. From operations in the symbolic field to manipulations of the bureaucratic apparatus, his work tackles issues such as colonialism, imperialism, the repatriation of objects, and alternative modes of accountability and compensation.

The reuse of food packaging and the acts of cooking and sharing meals, recurrent in some of his most celebrated works, serve both as a vehicle to address migratory flows, diasporas, and dispossession, and as a testimony to the preservation of traditions and cultural resistance. His practice, based on engaging with communities and inviting people to take part, blurs the boundary between art and life, surpassing a solely negative critical stance and presenting itself as a tool for building hope and collective empowerment.

The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist is an ongoing series of works that construct reappearances of historically looted and recently stolen or destroyed artifacts and sculptures of ancient Mesopotamia in Iraq.

The first iteration in the series took place in 2008. It unfolds as an intricate narrative about the artifacts stolen from the National Museum of Iraq, Baghdad, in the aftermath of the US invasion of April 2003; the current status of their whereabouts; and the series of events surrounding the invasion, the plundering, and related protagonists. The centerpiece of the project is an ongoing series of sculptures that represent an attempt to reconstruct the looted archeological artifacts.

Alluding to the implied invisibility of the museum artifacts (initial reports about their looting were inflated due to the “fog of war,” stated museum officials), the reconstructions are made from the packaging of Middle Eastern foodstuffs and local Arabic newspapers, items of cultural visibility found in cities across the United States. The objects are created by a team of assistants using the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute database, as well as information posted on Interpol’s website. This project is an ongoing commitment to recuperate over 7,000 objects that remain missing.

Started in 2018, The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist (Northwest Palace of Nimrud) centers on the relief sculptures that lined the walls of the ancient Assyrian Palace of Nimrud (present-day Mosul, Iraq) that were destroyed by ISIS attacks in 2014. Using photodocumentation as a basis, the reliefs were faithfully reconstructed by Rakowitz and a team of assistants using Arabic newspapers, food packaging, and cardboard, and finally displayed in the museum in accordance with their exact placement in the Nimrud Palace.

Once set up, the “reappeared” reliefs not only address their recent destruction and the sociopolitical web around the event but also showcase the historical plundering of the region. Their careful reconstruction—as if the audience was transported to the “day before” the ISIS attacks—reveals the missing panels and pieces long removed by colonial expeditions. Thus, the missing parts and the “beheading” of some figures depicted in the Assyrian panels correspond to parts taken to private collections or, in some cases, museums in Europe and the United States.

The Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square measures approximately 4.3 meters in length.  So too does the Lamassu, a winged bull protective Assyrian deity that stood at the entrance to the Nergal Gate of Nineveh from ca. 700 B.C. until February 2015, when ISIS destroyed it along with artifacts in the nearby Mosul Museum. For the Fourth Plinth, I have reconstructed the Lamassu, using empty metal Iraqi date syrup cans to clad an underlying steel armature. The reverse features a carved cuneiform inscription that was invisible to viewers because it was cemented to the wall of the Nergal Gate. Here, in its removed and displaced state, the cuneiform is exposed and translates as: “Sennacherib, king of the world, king of Assyria, had the (inner) and outer wall of Nineveh built anew and raised as high as mountain(s)”.  

As with all my projects, the cycle of materials, their provenance and their aura, is important. While the bronze elements of the Corinthian capital of Nelson’s Column are made from canons salvaged from the wreck of the HMS Royal George, the salvage of date syrup cans makes present the human, economic and ecological disasters caused by the Iraq Wars and their aftermath. Iraqi dates were once considered the best in the world and constituted the country’s second largest export after oil. In the late 1970s, the Iraqi date industry listed over 30 million date palms in the country. By the end of the 2003 Iraq War, only 3 million remained.   

To circumvent the 1990 U.N. embargo and reach a Western market, Iraqi manufacturers shipped date syrup to Syria to be packed in unmarked cans. The cans then went to Lebanon, where they received a label identifying them as “Product of Lebanon” and were exported worldwide as a veiled commodity. Today, post-sanctions, only one brand among dozens lists Iraq as its country of origin due to the exorbitant security-related charges levied by U.S. government agencies on imports indicating Iraqi origin. 

The reconstruction, set on the Fourth Plinth, allows an apparition to haunt Trafalgar Square. Unlike the pair of Lamassu housed inside the British Museum, the recreation stands outside with wings raised, still performing his duty as guardian of Iraq’s past and present, hoping to return in the future. 

In 1941, Nissim bin Ishaq Daoud bet Aziz, Michael Rakowitz’s grandfather, was exiled from Iraq with his family. Like many Iraqi Jews, they were forced to leave behind a legacy spanning close to half a millennium. After settling in Long Island, his import and export company, Davisons & Co., among the most successful and active in the Middle East, found a new home in New York. The business closed in the 1960s, and Nissim Isaac David died in 1975.

In 2004, the artist reopens the business as an artistic project, and, in 2006, opens Davisons & Co. as a storefront on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, New York. The company initially functioned somewhat symbolically as a drop box. Then in 2005 it took the form of a full-fledged packaging center and sorting facility. Members of the Iraqi diaspora community and interested citizens were invited to send objects and goods of their choice, to be shipped free of charge to recipients in Iraq, an exceptional offer at a time when the shipping and trade infrastructure in the country had completely collapsed on account of the war.

In addition to continuing the gesture of shipping items, the project sought to explore the possibility of importing something that was clearly labeled as “Product of Iraq.” This venture began with the discovery of a can of Second House Products Date Syrup. Though stamped on the back as “Product of Lebanon,” the date syrup is in fact processed in Baghdad, put into large plastic vats, and then driven over the border into Syria, where it gets packed into unmarked aluminum cans. It is then driven across the border into Lebanon, where it receives a label and is then exported to the rest of the world. From 1990 until May 2003, this was one method that Iraqi companies used in order to circumvent UN sanctions. It was still in practice in August 2004, more than one year after the sanctions had been dropped, due to prohibitive “security” charges levied by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and Homeland Security for any freight bearing the origin of Iraq.

Finally, “the date syrup led me to dates, which were legendary in Iraq, with a yield of over 600 varieties,” Rakowitz recounts. “I signed a deal with an Iraqi company, Al Farez, to import one ton of dates from the city of Hilla, the first such deal in more than 25 years.”

paraSITE, by Michael Rakowitz, is an ongoing project that proposes temporary inflatable shelters for unhoused people, constructed from plastic bags, tape, and polyethylene. Developed in conversations with people experiencing homelessness, the shelters are adapted to their specific needs and wishes. The custom-built structures attach to the exterior outtake vents of a building’s Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system, using the warm air expelled from the building to both inflate and heat their interiors.

The project began with the distribution of more than 30 shelters to unhoused individuals in Boston, Cambridge, and New York City, and, since then, they have been constructed and distributed annually in Chicago.

The artist has also developed a manual with instructions on how to build such shelters, prompting readers to implement and create this palliative action against the housing crisis.

Enemy Kitchen is another ongoing project by Michael Rakowitz that has evolved over time while engaging with different communities. Created to counter a monolithic view of Iraq as a place exclusively associated with war, the artwork initially involved teaching and cooking Iraqi recipes together, bringing people closer through shared meals.

“In January 1991, I witnessed Iraq for the first time in real time via CNN’s green‑tinted night‑vision images—of buildings I would never get to visit—being blown up by American bombs. Suddenly, there at the dinner table, watching all this unfold, I realized that the place my grandparents fled to was destroying the place they fled from. I felt bifurcated, shattered,” Rakowitz said in an interview with Cecilia Fajardo Hill. “My mother saw how this was affecting me and tried to get my brothers’ and my attention, distracting us from the TV. ‘Do you know there are no Iraqi restaurants in New York?’ she asked. It was like a riddle from the Sphinx. Later, I understood what she meant: Iraq was not visible in this country beyond oil and war. That moment became a primal scene that inspired Enemy Kitchen as the drum once again began to beat toward war with Iraq in 2003.”

With the help of his mother, the artist compiled Baghdadi recipes to teach to a variety of public audiences, including middle- and high‑school students. Preparing and then sharing this food created a pathway through which Iraq could be discussed—“through that most familiar of cultural staples: nourishment.” The work confronted the invisibility of Iraqi culture in the United States, seeking to offer an alternative narrative to the one promoted by the media.

Over time, the project developed into a fully functioning food truck, staffed by Iraqi chefs with veterans serving as their sous-chefs.