RADIO ART ARCHIVE
Michael Rakowitz
Michael Rakowitz is an Iraqi-American artist whose socially-engaging works deal with the erasure of cultures in the aftermath of war and other violence, loss, and preserving histories. Some works include Enemy Kitchen, an ongoing cooking workshop launched in 2003 that teaches Iraqi recipes compiled by the artist’s mother and facilitates a new way of talking about Iraqi culture for American audiences; A house with a date palm will never starve (2018), a cookbook centered on the use of date syrup compiled by the artist with contributions from 41 chefs and food writers; The Flesh is Yours, The Bones are Ours (2015), a sculptural project in Istanbul dealing with the Armenian genocide of 1915, which the government of Turkey doesn’t acknowledge; and Dull Roar (2005), an inflatable sculptural installation shedding light on the ill-fated Pruitt-Igoe development in St. Louis, which was meant to be integrated middle-class housing but became so run-down and dangerous that it was destroyed in 1972 and its rubble used to create luxury housing in the suburbs. Rakowitz has shown his work internationally, including at MoMA, MassMOCA, Palais de Tokyo, Tate Modern in London, MCA Chicago, SITE Santa Fe, dOCUMENTA (13), P.S.1, and at numerous international biennials. Rakowitz lives and works in Chicago, where he teaches at Northwestern University.