“The invisible enemy should not exist (Northwest Palace of Kalhu, Room F, Southeast Entrance; Room S, Southwest Entrance)” Installation view at Barakat Contemporary ©Barakat ContemporaryBarakat Contemporary will present The invisible enemy should not exist (Northwest Palace of Kalhu, Room F, Southeast Entrance; Room S, Southwest Entrance), the first solo exhibition in Korea of Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz (b. 1973), from May 10 to July 30.
The artist’s work reached a turning point after the Iraq War in 2003, and this exhibition presents a selection of his major works from the two decades since then. The exhibition’s title, ‘The invisible enemy should not exist,’ is a series of works that the artist has been working on since 2007, reviving artifacts looted from the Iraqi National Museum after the Iraq War.
The exhibition’s eponymous work, , is installed by the artist throughout the first floor of the exhibition and is open to the public for the first time, pointing to the exact location of the looted palace spaces that the artist and his team recreated. The work is created using the ‘Papier-mâché’ technique on the walls, utilizing Arabic-English newspapers and food packaging found in the neighborhood.
The exhibition also includes works that recreate and reclaim Iraq’s Mesopotamian cultural heritage that was looted or lost during the war, as well as the family’s displacement from Iraq to the United States. The exhibition listens to the stories of all the things that have been pushed aside by force and disappeared along with people and proposes tangible healing from invisible trauma.
