Michael Rakowitz employs sculpture, video, installations, and performance in a practice that aims to fill in the social, historical, and political trenches that cause the displacement of people and physical objects. As an American with an Iraqi-Jewish background, his cultural roots have provided inspiration for many of his works.

At Aichi Triennale 2025, Rakowitz exhibits seven works from a project to fabricate full scale reproductions of 200 relief panels that were once part of the ancient Assyrian Northwest Palace of Kalhu, (Nimrud), near present day Mosul, Iraq, which was destroyed in 2015 by ISIS in the aftermath of the US-led Iraq War. The artist’s project involves faithful reproduction of the installation in the palace immediately before its destruction, including empty spaces with museum labels giving the locations of panels that still existed elsewhere. These spaces are a vital part of the project, and are represented at the triennale venue by empty spaces on the floor. The labels mostly indicate that the panels remained in private collections or museums in the West after their excavation and export in the mid-19th century by the British archeologist Austen Henry Layard. The story of Mesopotamian artifacts lost or displaced after the war parallels the story of the artist’s own family, who had to flee Iraq in 1941. By providing a view of what the palace would have looked like the day before its destruction, Rakowitz memorializes not just the lost panels, but also people violently forced to leave their homeland. Careful examination of these works reveals that his materials include food wrappers exported from Middle Eastern countries and Arabic newspapers available in the US and diasporic communities. Such single-use, soon-discarded materials emphasize the ephemeral nature and eventual fate of the long-treasured cultural artifacts.