BeLonging: Michael Rakowitz and the Mesopotamian collection

About the exhibition

In BeLonging: Michael Rakowitz and the Mesopotamian collection, sculptures by Iraqi-American contemporary artist Michael Rakowitz are shown together with displaced Mesopotamian artifacts from Medelhavsmuseet’s collection, some of them up to 4,500 years old.

The contemporary works and ancient objects meet in a dialogue about cultural heritage, displacement, memory and belonging. The video work The Ballad of Special Ops Cody, shown on the big screen in the atrium, highlights both the loss of Middle Eastern cultural heritage and the human suffering imposed by war, political upheaval and foreign occupation.

The exhibition builds on BeLonging, previously presented at Medelhavsmuseet in Stockholm. At SSE, selected works and archaeological objects were brought into the atrium, creating a new encounter between contemporary art, ancient material culture and the daily life of the school.

Mesopotamia and displaced objects

Mesopotamia was a region around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, encompassing modern Iraq and parts of Syria, Turkey and Iran. It was among the first places where people began to settle in large numbers, around 12,000 BC, and the earliest writing system—cuneiform—was developed there around 3500 BC.

By placing archaeological objects beside Rakowitz’s contemporary works, the exhibition asks what happens when objects are removed from their original contexts—and how museums, artists and audiences can approach histories marked by excavation, conflict and displacement.

The invisible enemy should not exist

In the ongoing art project The invisible enemy should not exist (2007–ongoing), Rakowitz reconstructs objects that were looted from the National Museum of Iraq after the US-led invasion in 2003. He calls these sculptures “reappearances”. He is not trying to recreate or replace what has been lost, but offers a placeholder or blueprint.

Rakowitz sees them as ghosts because, like ghosts, they can comfort those who miss them and haunt those who have wronged them. More than 7,000 objects from the museum remain missing.

Materials, memory and belonging

Rakowitz uses contemporary Middle Eastern food packaging and Arabic and Assyrian newspapers found in the United States as material for his sculptures. They reference cooking as something that reminds many people of home and joy, but also survival and cultural resistance.

The materials make visible the people who eat and read, who have left or fled, and the longing and belonging of people and objects in movement. The sculptures also serve as reminders of the Iraqi lives lost during the war, which did not receive the same public attention as the lost artifacts.

The Ballad of Special Ops Cody

The video work The Ballad of Special Ops Cody (2017) is also part of the exhibition. Through a sound shower, the voice of war veteran Gin McGill-Prather echoes questions asked silently by the objects: Who are you? Where are you from? Why are you here? Don’t you want to go home?

Project credits

The exhibition is a collaboration between SSE Art Initiative and Medelhavsmuseet / the National Museums of World Culture, curated by Ninhursag Tadaros.

About the artist

Michael Rakowitz is an Iraqi-American artist whose work explores contested histories, cultural heritage, displacement and the afterlives of objects. Through sculpture, video, installations and long-term collaborative projects, he examines how art can make absence visible without pretending to replace what has been lost.

Rakowitz’s practice often brings together archaeology, food, migration and political history. Learn more through his Art21 artist profile.

“I decided that it would be interesting to, not reconstruct, but reappear those artifacts as a spectral presence. As a ghost of what once was.”

Michael Rakowitz
Artist, in an interview with Art21