Michael Rakowitz, The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist
Photo by Kayhan Kaygusuz, courtesy of PiArtworks, Istanbul, 2021
American artist Michael Rakowitz (b. 1973) grew up in an Iraqi family in New York, and lives and works in Chicago. Across two decades, his practice has focused on highlighting the invisibility of Iraqis beyond images of conflict, either through food, archaeological artifacts or other narratives. In Réapparitions, on view from February 25 to June 12, 2022 at FRAC in France, the artist recreates or “re-appears” the missing and destroyed artifacts taken from the National Museum of Iraq after the American invasion in the early 2000s.
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In his project, The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist, a small section of which was on show at the end of last year at Karaköy’s Pi Artworks, Michael Rakowitz began to recreate the missing and destroyed artifacts taken from the National Museum of Iraq after the American invasion in the early 2000s.
The task is of course unattainable as there are more than 7,000 artifacts, and so far, Rakowitz and his team have recreated about 900 of them. (The artist has always been careful to name all the members in his team, in order to highlight the obscurity of labor in contemporary art, which resonates with the archaeological context where it is indeed unnamed laborers who undertake the task of excavation.)
But to use the term recreating is misleading here, for what we’re dealing with is not an archeological restoration or reconstruction that aims to replace the past with a semblance, but what Rakowitz call re-presencing or re-appearing: For the artist these are not reconstructions or replicas, but reappearances. In this spectral, and yet wildly colorful form (making reference to the archeological debate on polychromy), these are ghosts that represent the lost Iraqis. In his 2021 lecture at the Oriental Institute in Chicago, (G)Hosting, Rakowitz uses a beautiful metaphor: “These are place holders for human lives that cannot be reconstructed and are still looking for sanctuary.” In an era of global strife, with homeless people wandering around the world, we wonder often about the ancient notions of sanctuary and hospitality, sacrosanct in our traditions, and yet so far from our political reality.