In connection with the exhibition Michael Rakowitz: Ongoing, SITE SANTA FE presents a selection from his 2011 Spoils series on the exterior billboards, documenting Rakowitz’s long-term project serving Iraqi date syrup and venison on Saddam Hussein’s opulent china.

About Michael Rakowitz

Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz (b. 1973, New York) attempts to undo the cultural erasure of Iraq and recreate antiquities that have been destroyed, looted, and removed from Iraq’s museums and ancient sites. Through Rakowitz’s works in sculpture, drawing, and video, lost or stolen objects of significant cultural patrimony are given new life for new audiences in a new era.

Living and working in Chicago, Rakowitz’s work has appeared in venues worldwide including dOCUMENTA (13), P.S.1, MoMA, MassMOCA, Castello di Rivoli, the 16th Biennale of Sydney, the 10th Istanbul Biennial, Sharjah Biennial 8, Tirana Biennale, National Design Triennial at the Cooper-Hewitt, and Transmediale 05. He has had solo exhibitions at Tate Modern in London, Lombard Freid Gallery in New York, Alberto Peola Arte Contemporanea in Torino, and Kunstraum Innsbruck.

He is the recipient of a 2012 Tiffany Foundation Award; a 2008 Creative Capital Grant; a Sharjah Biennial Jury Award; a 2006 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship Grant in Architecture and Environmental Structures; the 2003 Dena Foundation Award, and the 2002 Design 21 Grand Prix from UNESCO.

His work features in major private and public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Neue Galerie, Kassel, Germany; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Smart Museum of Art, Chicago; Van Abbemuseum, Endhoven, Netherlands; The British Museum; Kabul National Museum, Afghanistan; and UNESCO, Paris. Most recently, Rakowitz unveiled a recreation of a winged bull sculpture destroyed by ISIS as the 2018-19 featured public artwork on the Fourth Plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square.

Rakowitz is Professor of Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern University and is represented by Rhona Hoffman Gallery and Jane Lombard Gallery.