Based in Chicago, Michael Rakowitz is an Iraqi-American architect, artist, chef, cultural archeologist, radio host, and many other things.

Part of an Impossible Task presents work by Michael Rakowitz that examines the role of cultural artifacts on how individuals and societies define power. What have monuments meant to people in the past and what do they mean today? How can artists and viewers dismantle the heroic narratives associated with many historic monuments to inspire more nuanced readings of the past?

“With war comes destruction, the loss of thousands of years of human history,” reads a quote from Iraqi archaeologist Selma Al-Radi that perfectly encapsulates the essence of “Michael Rakowitz: Listening back to Fragments.” The exhibition, uniquely combining two of Rakowitz’s projects, “The invisible enemy should not exist” (2007-ongoing) and “Radio Silence” (2018), offers a profound exploration of cultural memory, loss and reclamation.

Near the beginning of his film I’m good at love, I’m good at hate, it’s in between I freeze, 2017/2023, Michael Rakowitz reads a missive to Leonard Cohen (1934–2016): “Dear Leonard, I hope this letter finds you well.

At Jane Lombard Gallery, a fan breathes life into the sculpture Behemoth (2022) until it inflates to the size of an equestrian statue. Standing at an imposing 11 feet tall, it assumes a monumental posture akin to statues of figures of power and authority, before deflating, then refilling, on a timed cycle. In the moment of complete deflation, the giant structure bows forward and collapses at the viewer’s feet.

Chicago artist Michael Rakowitz’s solo exhibition, “The Monument, The Monster and The Maquette” at Jane Lombard Gallery in New York City

Highlights from New York galleries and the art magazines from the last few weeks.

The fall art season is buzzing and galleries have opened new shows coinciding with the most recent Armory fair.

The Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz explores the potential of public art both to expose trauma and help people find ways of resolving it

The Iraqi-American artist on recreating the Hanging Gardens for asylum seekers in Gateshead

Michael Rakowitz’s The Waiting Gardens of the North presents a dream of public space as a place to think, play, be

A living installation at the Baltic Centre in Gateshead uses horticulture to send a political message while also offering solace

When great artists have been blessed with green fingers, they've created lush oases and floral wonderlands – which you can still visit today

The Iraqi-American’s intricately-labelled planters and models form a repository for stories on everything from the destruction of Palestinian olives to homesick migrants

At Barbara Wien, Berlin, the artist reevaluates his love of Leonard Cohen in light of the musician’s stance on Palestine

Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz has long been on a mission to revive the lost remnants of Iraq ― physical, cultural and historical

One might go to an art fair anticipating spectacle, but what I found at Expo Chicago was much more heartening, and deeply Midwestern.

The Edith Farnsworth House Historic House is pleased to present the 2023 Artist in Residence exhibition, The Last of Animal Builders curated by Alberto Ortega Trejo and featuring the works of Faysal Altunbozar, Selva Aparicio, ASMA, Daniel Baird, Renée Green, Claudia Hart, Ragnar Kjartansson, Michael Rakowitz, Joshi Radin, and Thiago Rocha Pitta. 

The exhibition is a homage to the late curator Okwui Enwezor who began planning it before his untimely death.

As part of a collaboration with Art21, hear news-making artists describe their inspirations in their own words.

The artist says he will share custody of his replicas with an Iraqi institution

Iraqi American artist Michael Rakowitz has called on the British Museum to return an artifact to Iraq in exchange for the donation of a large-scale work by him.

While most of the artworks are in storage, some went on tour and some have found permanent homes. Rachel Whiteread calls for end to Trafalgar Square fourth plinth sculptures

The two artists discuss Simmons’s latest exhibition at the Queens Museum, ‘Crisis Makes a Book Club’ and how art can be catalyst for sustainable change

The artist’s The invisible enemy should not exist… at Green Art Gallery, Dubai is a sensitive reconstruction of ancient Iraqi history that offers something beyond nostalgia.

The Iraqi-American artist brings his 'The invisible enemy should not exist' exhibition to Green Art Gallery.

Green Art Gallery is pleased to present Michael Rakowitz’s first solo exhibition at the Gallery, following his large-scale institutional exhibition at the Jameel Arts Centre in Dubai in 2020. He has shown regularly at Sharjah Art Foundation including mostly recently in Sharjah Biennial 14: Leaving the Echo Chamber (2019) and Unsettled Objects (2021) at the Flying Saucer. His work will be included in the upcoming Sharjah Biennial 15: Thinking Historically in the Present, opening February 2023.

Conversation between Gordon Hall, Abigail Lucien, Lydia Ourahmane, and Michael Rakowitz. Moderated by Mira Dayal.

“If the U.S. cultural present were a color,” Anna Watkins Fisher writes in her new book, “it would be Safety Orange.” The highly visible hue is the subject of a new 98-page volume, Safety Orange, which came out in January as part of the University of Minnesota Press’s reliably good “Forerunners” series. The book considers the color as an emblem of neoliberal “responsibilization.”

Pompeii is moving into the 21st century as this autumn, two key projects linked to the long-term contemporary art programme Pompeii Commitment: Archaeological Matters launch. Contemporary initiative also includes new book with contributions from more than 60 artists such as Adrian Villar Rojas, Lara Favaretto and Michael Rakowitz.

Michael Rakowitz featured in Contemporary Art Daily

Using food packaging and newspapers as materials, US artist Michael Rakowitz brings back treasures Iraq lost to ISIS – and to Western museums.

Michael Rakowitz is a US American-Iraqi artist who gained recognition for his project “paraSITE” in the early 2000s. The editorial team at Parasite Art reached out to him, as one of the first artists in our knowledge to use the concept of the parasite in his work.

Michael Rakowitz and Heather Phillipson among those selected to create new works through Imperial War Museums' 14-18 NOW Legacy Fund

Michael Rakowitz and Cathy Wilkes are among the artists creating brand new works for the Imperial War Museums’ 14-18 Now Legacy Fund.

One of his most striking new works is a towering form built of artifacts with direct ties to torn-down memorials of Robert E. Lee.

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Relic
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Curator Ciera McKissick investigates which Black artifacts of today might inform the future in this concise group exhibition.
Through May 27

The biennial’s 2023 edition will feature more than 140 artists including Kader Attia, Hassan Hajjaj, Mona Hatoum, Lubaina Himid and Carrie Mae Weems

After two dormant COVID years, Chicago’s art market has come roaring back to life with the return of EXPO, the Midwest’s largest art fair.

CHICAGO — Late last month Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said she “fully expects” to return a controversial statue of Christopher Columbus to its former pedestal in Grant Park.

That was concerning news to members of the mayor’s committee reviewing Chicago monuments, emails obtained by the Chicago Tribune show.

University of Illinois at Chicago art history professor Lisa Lee sent an email to the committee and city officials on March 29, saying she “was surprised/astounded/perplexed/flummoxed/distraught by the Mayor’s comments about the Columbus statue ... and I am wondering if you might be able to give us an update about the status of the report or any other insights if possible?”

The work of Michael Rakowitz (b. 1973, Long Island) interrogates the history of museums and their historical complicity in extractive and colonial legacies. His practice aims to establish a new dynamic of reparation and accountability. Born into a Jewish-Iraqi family, the American artist explores the transformations brought about by exile and finds ways to resuscitate images, forms, or architecture(s) that have disappeared, or are about to be erased.

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.

Michael Rakowitz’s work in Istanbul is of momentous significance, as his solo show, ‘The invisible enemy should not exist,’ offers locals and travelers a window into his epic vision of repatriation

Instead of romanticizing military heroism, Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz’s sculpture acknowledges the atrocities and senselessness of war.

Whether you want to learn from the experts or stay ahead of knotty food politics: if you like cooking, there’s a podcast for that

New and overlooked artists shine at the Armory Show, New York’s largest in-person fair since the pandemic, and other shows across the city.

The eight participating artists are Diana Al-Hadid, Benny Andrews, Julian Charrière, Tau Lewis, Grayson Perry, Michael Rakowitz, Cammie Staros, and Yinka Shonibare CBE.

Embark on an outdoor art tour along England’s South East coast through our curated guide to the Waterfronts commissions.

An in-depth podcast conversation on the artist's big influenced, from T.S. Eliot to Leonard Cohen.

The new Waterfronts exhibition – part of the England’s Creative Coast project – brings contemporary sculpture to seaside towns to attract, and challenge, visitors

The Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz is best known for remaking lost artifacts out of food packaging. He talks to Apollo about his anti-war memorial for Margate and about mining history for new meanings. 

“April is the cruellest month.” A century after TS Eliot immortalised a pavilion on Margate beach by writing The Waste Land there — “on Margate Sands I can connect nothing with nothing” — another American takes the poem’s opening lines as the title of his new public sculpture for this bleakly beautiful, socially troubled stretch of coast, and teases out many difficult global connections.

Artist Michael Rakowitz describes himself as someone who creates encounters, structures, and objects—his sculptural practice is “as an exertion of pressure,” he recently told Brooke Jaffe for “ARTnews Live,” our ongoing IGTV series featuring interviews with a range of creatives.

One of the challenges of talking coherently about Michael Rakowitz’s exhibition at the Wellin Museum is coming to an understanding of what the work is: Is it a memorial to lost cultural heritage, an act of historical recovery, a collective bereavement, or a model for survival? Perhaps this essay is my attempt at answering this question.

Northwestern art Prof. Michael Rakowitz seeks to explore the diaspora between Iraq and Iraqi immigrants through his work recreating lost artifacts and reliefs from the ancient Iraqi city of Nimrud. Watch the video (Click here).  Closed captions available.

Drawing upon his Iraqi-Jewish heritage, Michael Rakowitz critiques ongoing systems of colonization in his sculptural and participatory work. The artist recounts a formative memory from his childhood, when his mother took him to see reliefs depicting the lion hunt of Ashurbanipal in the Assyrian galleries at the British Museum and posed the question, “What is this doing here?” For Rakowitz, this moment crystalized his understanding of museums as places of extraction, colonization, and crime. In his work today, Rakowitz explores ways to subvert the imperialist role of museums, interrogate the value they place on objects over people, and create ongoing systems for repair and accountability.

Raffi Khatchadourian offers a comprehensive profile for The New Yorker about Michael Rakowitz and the legacy of his political work. 

The prize recognizes artists who “elevate the understanding of sculpture and its possibilities.” Rakowitz is the fifth recipient of the honor.

Michael Rakowitz's work will be featured as part of the Oriental Institute's centennial celebration, opening September 28. 

Michael Rakowitz' new cookbook - A House With A Date Palm Will Never Starve - continues his ongoing project on the literal and metaphorical significance of Iraqi dates. 

Review of Michael Rakowitz's retrospective at Whitechapel Gallery.

Gelare Khoshgozaran reviews Rakowitz' exhibition Dispute Between the Tamarisk and the Date Palm

A review of Michael Rakowitz's first European retrospective at Whitechapel Gallery, London.

Review of Dispute Between the Tamarisk and the Date Palm at REDCAT. 

Review of A Color Removed at FRONT, a new art Triennial in Cleveland.

Review of the artist's Fourth Plinth commission The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist.

Review of Backstroke of the West at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.