Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz's (b. 1973, USA) first major European survey presents a sequence of installations drawing on architecture, cultural artefacts and cuisine to tell stories of social ritual, conflict and loss. It encompasses work considering the citizen visionaries of post Soviet Hungary, Middle Eastern Beatles fans and the stonecarvers of Afghanistan, with Rakowitz's casts of players and objects revealing the legacy of colonisation, modernism and globalism.
The artist's life-size replica of the gigantic lamassu, one of two monumental winged bulls that once guarded the gates of Nineveh in Iraq, currently features on Trafalgar Square's Fourth Plinth. This recreation of an ancient mythological creature is made from everyday date syrup cans and is part of an epic endeavour to recreate all 7,000 objects looted from the Iraq Museum in 2003, as well as those destroyed more recently at archaeological sites like Nimrud, also presented here.
Text in English and Italian.
This fully illustrated survey of his most important works is accompanied by an essay by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, an interview with Michael Rakowitz by Iwona Blazwick and a range of perspectives contributed by Habda Rashid, Nora Razian, Ella Shohat and Marianna Vecellio.
Details
Hardcover | 9.5 x 11 in.
224 pages.
ISBN 9788836643332
