Michael Rakowitz, The invisible enemy should not exist (Northwest Palace of Kalhu, Room S, Western Entrance)
Installation view at Green Art Galelry, Dubai, 2022
(excerpt)
The solo exhibition by Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz at Green Art Gallery, titled The invisible enemy should not exist, is a powerful and immediate ongoing project centred on the threatened, destroyed and missing cultural heritage of Iraq.
Rakowitz reimagines and reconstructs artefacts looted from the National Museum of Iraq in the aftermath of the Second Gulf War that began in in 2003. His pieces are created from a database of images and constructed using papier-mache made from Arabic-English newspapers and West Asian food packaging.
It is a surreal and contradictory melding of time streams and references, leaving anyone who interacts with the work at a loss for words at the poignant story Rakowitz is telling.