WEBVTT 00:00:11.600 --> 00:00:15.920 I remember my mother bringing us  to the British Museum in London. 00:00:17.520 --> 00:00:20.640 My mother's family was from Iraq. 00:00:21.600 --> 00:00:24.640 She brought us immediately  to the Assyrian galleries 00:00:24.640 --> 00:00:29.840 and into the room that had  the Lion Hunt of Ashurbanipal. 00:00:31.440 --> 00:00:37.120 There's nothing cooler than being ten years old  and learning that this is the first comic book 00:00:37.120 --> 00:00:39.360 and your people are responsible for it. 00:00:41.120 --> 00:00:43.040 She turned to us and she said, 00:00:43.040 --> 00:00:45.360 "What is it doing here?" 00:00:45.360 --> 00:00:48.000 Which made us keenly aware that 00:00:48.000 --> 00:00:51.760 these museums were not just  these polite reliquaries 00:00:51.760 --> 00:00:55.280 for things that have been  exchanged amongst cultures-- 00:00:55.280 --> 00:00:57.840 that these were violently extracted. 00:00:59.440 --> 00:01:03.562 It was a museum, but it was also a crime palace. 00:01:05.145 --> 00:01:08.218 [Michael Rakowitz: Haunting the West] 00:01:19.200 --> 00:01:27.798 "The invisible enemy should not exist" is  this on-going work that I began in 2006. 00:01:28.557 --> 00:01:31.360 In the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, 00:01:31.360 --> 00:01:36.079 eight-thousand-plus artifacts were  looted from the National Museum of Iraq. 00:01:37.520 --> 00:01:42.800 I started to think about what it would mean  for those artifacts to come back as ghosts 00:01:42.800 --> 00:01:45.772 to haunt Western museums. 00:01:48.800 --> 00:01:52.274 This project has unfortunately grown to include 00:01:52.274 --> 00:01:56.629 the archaeological sites that have  been devastated by groups like ISIS. 00:01:58.560 --> 00:02:04.160 This installation is Room F in  the northwest palace of Nimrud. 00:02:04.160 --> 00:02:06.960 When it was destroyed in 2015, 00:02:06.960 --> 00:02:11.356 it was holding two hundred reliefs. 00:02:12.160 --> 00:02:15.200 However, it originally had over  six hundred of these reliefs. 00:02:15.200 --> 00:02:20.800 The majority of those reliefs  were excavated in the mid-1800s 00:02:20.800 --> 00:02:25.000 and then sent to different Western institutions. 00:02:26.560 --> 00:02:32.080 The West assigns value on the  objects from that part of the world 00:02:32.080 --> 00:02:36.480 but it's not at all symmetrical  when you consider the way in which 00:02:36.480 --> 00:02:40.927 there's been this devaluation of the  people that are from those places. 00:02:43.120 --> 00:02:49.680 The reliefs are situated in accordance  with the original architectural footprint. 00:02:49.680 --> 00:02:54.240 What this project seeks to do is  put the viewer into the position 00:02:54.240 --> 00:02:59.600 of an Iraqi inside that palace  the day before ISIS destroyed it, 00:02:59.600 --> 00:03:04.720 and to show how much of their  history they didn't have access to, 00:03:04.720 --> 00:03:08.701 and the gaps that they were forced  to be looking at and looking through. 00:03:11.920 --> 00:03:19.856 These artifacts were also forcibly removed the  way that my family was from my mother's homeland. 00:03:22.160 --> 00:03:28.480 My mother's family left Iraq in 1947 00:03:28.480 --> 00:03:34.480 as the result of the emergence of  nationalist ideologies in the Middle East. 00:03:34.480 --> 00:03:39.072 The Iraqi Jews were kind of  in an impossible situation. 00:03:39.840 --> 00:03:45.760 When they entered the U.S., there must have  been all kinds of pressures to assimilate. 00:03:45.760 --> 00:03:49.837 Their assimilation story was not  one where they gave everything up. 00:03:50.400 --> 00:03:54.640 My grandparents were like the first  installation artists that I ever met. 00:03:54.640 --> 00:03:56.880 The house in Great Neck, Long Island, 00:03:56.880 --> 00:03:59.840 everything that was on the floor was from Iraq. 00:03:59.840 --> 00:04:02.720 Everything this was on the walls was from Iraq. 00:04:02.720 --> 00:04:07.160 And what was coming out of the  kitchen was most definitely from Iraq. 00:04:16.960 --> 00:04:19.760 When I was in my senior year of high school, 00:04:19.760 --> 00:04:24.640 the first Gulf War happened  in front of my brothers and I. 00:04:26.480 --> 00:04:28.080 My mother said to us, 00:04:28.080 --> 00:04:32.000 "Do you know there's no Iraqi  restaurants in New York?" 00:04:32.000 --> 00:04:40.127 What she was pointing out was that Iraqi culture  in the U.S. was not visible beyond oil and war. 00:04:42.880 --> 00:04:46.320 As we were approaching another Iraq war, 00:04:46.320 --> 00:04:50.880 I started a project that I could  collaborate with my mother on. 00:04:50.880 --> 00:04:53.369 That became "Enemy Kitchen." 00:04:54.400 --> 00:04:58.800 My mother distributed our family's recipes 00:04:58.800 --> 00:05:01.894 and I would cook with these different groups. 00:05:02.000 --> 00:05:03.040 --Make a little crater, 00:05:03.680 --> 00:05:06.480 --and then you take a piece of the meat here, 00:05:06.480 --> 00:05:07.982 --put it in the center... 00:05:08.720 --> 00:05:13.920 "Enemy Kitchen" offered some kind  of opposition to the way in which 00:05:13.920 --> 00:05:18.224 the war framed everything  when we spoke about Iraq. 00:05:20.480 --> 00:05:27.036 I always talk about the one that happened  in 2006 with a group of school kids. 00:05:27.600 --> 00:05:32.960 The schools that they were going to  had forbade a lot of the teachers 00:05:32.960 --> 00:05:37.840 from speaking about the war directly in  their classes because so many of them 00:05:38.640 --> 00:05:44.080 were connected to brothers and uncles-- and mothers and fathers-- 00:05:44.080 --> 00:05:46.800 who were stationed in Iraq. 00:05:46.800 --> 00:05:52.812 It was so unbelievably violent that  nobody ever thought to ask them 00:05:53.200 --> 00:05:55.282 what they thought of the war. 00:05:56.560 --> 00:06:01.680 Now "Enemy Kitchen" is a food truck  that's staffed by Iraqi chefs. 00:06:03.200 --> 00:06:08.000 The sous chefs and servers  are American combat veterans 00:06:08.000 --> 00:06:09.760 that served in Iraq. 00:06:09.760 --> 00:06:12.367 Those stories are now mobilized. 00:06:19.520 --> 00:06:23.680 The color schemes that my  studio and I have chosen, 00:06:23.680 --> 00:06:27.120 it's a little bit like the  color returning to the body. 00:06:27.120 --> 00:06:33.120 So there's a whole range of different  materials that one sees represented. 00:06:33.120 --> 00:06:39.920 The anise tea bags have created the yellowish  palette for the clothing of this "apkallu." 00:06:39.920 --> 00:06:43.120 This is one of my favorite colors. 00:06:43.120 --> 00:06:47.680 This orange is actually an  orange that I grew up with: 00:06:47.680 --> 00:06:52.320 the outside packaging of an apricot paste. 00:06:52.320 --> 00:06:54.527 It was like the original Fruit Roll-Up. 00:07:00.640 --> 00:07:02.784 If a ghost is going to properly haunt, 00:07:02.784 --> 00:07:07.443 it has to appear differently than the  entity appeared when it was living. 00:07:11.120 --> 00:07:15.440 These reliefs use the packaging  of Middle Eastern food stuffs. 00:07:15.440 --> 00:07:19.680 Because of Homeland Security, for  anything that is coming from Iraq, 00:07:19.680 --> 00:07:23.799 it would be too prohibitive  for somebody to import it. 00:07:24.080 --> 00:07:28.880 A can of date syrup labeled  as being "product of Lebanon" 00:07:28.880 --> 00:07:31.520 is actually processed in the Iraqi capital 00:07:31.520 --> 00:07:35.780 and then it's driven to Lebanon where  it gets sold to the rest of the world. 00:07:37.680 --> 00:07:44.320 The object in the museum holds its value  because it can tell you where it was from. 00:07:44.320 --> 00:07:48.423 The date syrup not being able to  tell you where they were from, 00:07:48.423 --> 00:07:52.347 that was the skin that these  artifacts should have to wear 00:07:52.347 --> 00:07:54.565 when they come back as ghosts. 00:08:00.640 --> 00:08:06.006 There's more than eight thousand  artifacts that are still at large. 00:08:06.640 --> 00:08:11.280 Of those, we've made just a bit over nine hundred. 00:08:11.280 --> 00:08:16.164 This is a project that is going  to outlive me and my studio. 00:08:17.920 --> 00:08:18.962 --Hey! 00:08:19.680 --> 00:08:20.939 --Salaam! 00:08:22.543 --> 00:08:24.023 [ASSISTANT] --How are you? 00:08:25.151 --> 00:08:26.613 [ALL LAUGH] 00:08:28.240 --> 00:08:33.510 [ASSISTANT] --I prepped some wing spines at my house. 00:08:33.965 --> 00:08:35.815 [RAKOWITZ] --Oh, that's beautiful, Denise! 00:08:38.240 --> 00:08:43.600 Once the studio went into lockdown  as a result of the pandemic, 00:08:43.600 --> 00:08:50.000 I was very adamant about making sure that  everybody in the studio was going to be okay. 00:08:50.320 --> 00:08:53.840 I wanted them to be able to continue to work. 00:08:55.360 --> 00:08:59.680 The assistants come for a visit every few weeks 00:08:59.680 --> 00:09:02.650 and they pick up more materials. 00:09:07.920 --> 00:09:11.600 --I'm currently working on this funerary bust. 00:09:12.400 --> 00:09:17.760 --I've just started working on an artifact  that was originally from eastern Iraq. 00:09:17.760 --> 00:09:23.262 --This is a figure from Mesopotamia,  specifically from the Khafaje region. 00:09:25.440 --> 00:09:29.680 In this moment where we've lost  the close proximity to one another 00:09:29.680 --> 00:09:32.766 and we're making these lost objects, 00:09:32.766 --> 00:09:35.440 we still have these moments  where we can locate one another 00:09:35.440 --> 00:09:37.379 and feel like we're not alone. 00:09:45.920 --> 00:09:52.804 When I was nominated in 2015 for  the Fourth Plinth project in London, 00:09:53.920 --> 00:09:58.796 ISIS attacked Nineveh and Nimrud. 00:09:59.280 --> 00:10:03.840 The "lamassu" were basically reduced to pebbles. 00:10:05.680 --> 00:10:10.800 I recognized the fact that I was going to  be working in public space on a pedestal-- 00:10:10.800 --> 00:10:12.720 that this was the city of London, 00:10:12.720 --> 00:10:14.880 the heart of empire-- 00:10:14.880 --> 00:10:20.240 and a very short walk away  brings one to the British Museum, 00:10:20.240 --> 00:10:23.440 that I had visited with my mother decades before, 00:10:23.440 --> 00:10:26.483 where they have several "lamassu." 00:10:42.320 --> 00:10:45.000 The Tate Modern had reached out to me 00:10:45.000 --> 00:10:49.634 about the possibility of them  serving as a custodian for this work. 00:10:50.320 --> 00:10:57.040 I did not want to somehow just repeat these  imperial museums being seen as caretakers. 00:10:57.760 --> 00:11:02.800 I wanted the work to be  shared by an Iraqi museum. 00:11:03.920 --> 00:11:08.411 It kept the problems of where  something belongs alive. 00:11:09.760 --> 00:11:12.320 A diasporic sculpture with wings, 00:11:12.320 --> 00:11:15.000 moving between two places, 00:11:15.000 --> 00:11:18.480 representing the conditions of modern Iraqis, 00:11:18.480 --> 00:11:20.586 where there's no fixed place. 00:11:24.000 --> 00:11:28.240 If we're to have conversations about  what decolonization truly looks like, 00:11:28.800 --> 00:11:31.419 it's accompanied by repair 00:11:31.419 --> 00:11:34.080 and it's accompanied by accountability. 00:11:34.080 --> 00:11:37.589 That work is actually something that's never done.