Michael Rakowitz

Artist, Chicago

The Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz explores the potential of public art both to expose trauma and help people find ways of resolving it. He has designed inflatable shelters for homeless people in the United States based on Bedouin tents in the Middle East (paraSITE; 1998), built a replica of the Soviet revolutionary Vladimir Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International (1919–20) with the help of Aboriginal communities in Sydney, Australia (White man got no dreaming; 2008) and most recently, worked with migrant communities in the north-east of England to create a garden and greenhouse at the Baltic Centre (The Waiting Gardens of the North; 2023). His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at international institutions, including the Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2019), the Whitechapel Gallery, London (2019), the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2017) and the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2015). He has also participated in international biennials including Documenta 13 (2012) and the 10th and 14th Istanbul Biennials (2007; 2015). Rakowitz lives and works in Chicago, where he is a professor of art theory and practice at Northwestern University.