{"id":8180,"date":"2022-11-18T06:36:51","date_gmt":"2022-11-18T06:36:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/the-lowdown-on-some-of-the-must-try-eateries-at-riyadh-seasons-boulevard-city\/"},"modified":"2022-11-18T06:36:51","modified_gmt":"2022-11-18T06:36:51","slug":"the-lowdown-on-some-of-the-must-try-eateries-at-riyadh-seasons-boulevard-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/?p=8180","title":{"rendered":"The lowdown on some of the must-try eateries at Riyadh Season\u2019s Boulevard City"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nDUBAI: Chicago-based artist Michael Rakowitz has a confession to make, right off the bat: He has never been to Iraq. This might come as a surprise, since the Iraqi-American is known for tirelessly devoting himself for over a decade to shedding light on the destruction and looting of Iraq\u2019s\u00a0indigenous\u00a0cultural heritage, starting from the 2003 US occupation to the rise of Daesh, as well as extractions carried out by museums in the West. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\nHowever, his memories \u2014 especially those of hearing conversations in Arabic between his grandmother and mother while growing up in New York \u2014 are steeped in Iraqi history. \u201cI heard the good things and the wondrous things,\u201d he tells Arab News.<\/p>\n
\nRakowitz\u2019s family is of the Jewish faith. In 1941, a violent pogrom, known as Farhud, aimed at Jews, took place in Baghdad, which was then a multicultural city. Many of them eventually fled their homeland.<\/p>\n\n\nMichael Rakowitz, Charita Baghdad (detail), 2020, Graphite on archival digital print, 1.1 \u00d7 4.57 m. (Photo credit: Anna Shtraus)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n\u201cMy grandparents and their children were suddenly and abruptly separated from that place. When I was growing up on Long Island, they created conditions where we were all surrounded by things that were like portals to that place,\u201d Rakowitz says. \u201cThey were their memories of daily life there and what it meant to them. They passed them on to my mother, who was very young when she arrived to the States.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nHis family history is partly explored \u2014 through a long, annotated chart dotted with pencil notes and pages from the Jewish Haggadah prayer book \u2014 in Rakowitz\u2019s solo show at Green Art Gallery in Dubai, which runs until Nov 23. Entitled \u201cThe invisible enemy should not exist,\u201d the exhibit also showcases Rakowitz\u2019s ongoing installation project, which began in 2007, addressing the looting of thousands of precious artifacts from the National Museum of Iraq following the invasion. He describes this work as \u201ca ghost to remind.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\nWith the help of his assistants, Rakowitz \u201creappears\u201d the looted artifacts by creating detailed, papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 relief-like sculptures, made of fragments of Arabic and English newspapers and Middle Eastern food packaging from grocery stores.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\nThe resulting sculptures are intentionally colorful \u2014 \u201cbreathing life\u201d into the artifacts. \u201cThe sheer number of what\u2019s still missing at the museum will outlive me and my studio,\u201d Rakowitz says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\u201cWe\u2019ve made about 800 of those objects; it\u2019s taken 16 years to do that,\u201d he continues. \u201cIn reappearing all of these things, we understand how much is missing. For me, those objects are never not tied to people. When the world saw the looting of the museum, there was an agreement that this was not simply a localized Iraqi loss. It was a loss for all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nThe curious name of the show is a translation of \u201cAj ibur shapu\u201d \u2014 the name of the processional way that ran through the iconic blue Ishtar Gate of Babylon. \u201cWhen I read that it meant \u2018The invisible enemy should not exist,\u2019 I thought that was the coolest name for a street that I\u2019d ever heard,\u201d says Rakowitz.\u00a0\u201cIt was so mysterious, but it also makes you think about other things, especially during a time of war, in a place like Iraq that is under assault. I thought that was a perfect title for a project like this, using some of the poetics of ancient Mesopotamia as a way of speaking about the now.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nA newer branch of Rakowitz\u2019s project focuses on a historical site near Mosul: the Northwest Palace of Kalhu, from which hundreds of panels (now reappeared by Rakowitz) have been taken by major museums over the years, and which was mostly destroyed by Daesh in 2015.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\nRakowitz uses very specific terminology when it comes to describing his practice. Observers could analyze it as a symbolic form of preserving, remembering, or informing. \u201cThere is an opportunity to reappear, but it\u2019s not a reconstruction,\u201d he explains. \u201cI used to reconstruct but then, when the 3D printing rage started to happen about 10 years ago, I started to think more critically about the fact that these are ghosts that I\u2019m making.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI\u2019m making them out of very vulnerable material. So, it\u2019s a reappearance of something that is disappeared that will disappear again,\u201d he continues. \u201cIt\u2019s crucial that it should not necessarily be something that hides the scar of the fact that something has happened. Even in the midst of making things present again, there is a loss that can\u2019t be recouped.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n