Stela fragment; relief carving shows two men wearing skirt and head band and four animals (lions) (IM23477) (Recovered, Missing, Stolen series)
Begun in 2006 in response to the looting of the National Museum of Baghdad in 2003, the series The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist reinterprets archaeological objects that were kept in the collections of this institution. Michael Rakowitz reproduces these “ghost artefacts” to scale based on the database created by the University of Chicago and on the worldwide list of stolen works compiled by Interpol. The works are not identical to the originals, however: they are simulacra that the artist wraps in food packaging and newspapers from the Arab world to reflect the economic stakes underlying international political relations. For him, it is a matter of “making visible objects that are culturally invisible,” notably through the pejorative perception of Iraqi culture within American society, by embodying the gaps that these destructions create and that this series contributes to filling. This installation, made up of a paper stele and the museum label, is a full-scale reproduction of a stele from Uruk dating from 3000 BCE. It incorporates the motifs of the original stele, namely a relief depicting two men hunting four lions.
Text written by Léonie Maton as part of the partnership between the École du Louvre and Lafayette Anticipations – Fonds de dotation Famille Moulin.
Exhibitions
FRAC Lorraine, Metz (France)
from 22 Feb to 12 Jun 2022
Institut des Cultures d'Islam, Paris (France)
from 29 Mar to 05 Aug 2018