Michael Rakowitz: The invisible enemy should not exist (Room F, section 1, Northwest Palace of Nimrud)

Jane Lombard Gallery is pleased to present, The invisible enemy should not exist (Room F, section 1, Northwest Palace of Nimrud), an ongoing project by Iraqi-American artist, Michael Rakowitz. This exhibition is the artist’s fifth solo show with the gallery. The invisible enemy should not exist (Room F, section 1, Northwest Palace of Nimrud), features bas-reliefs from Room F in the Palace of Nimrud, located in modern-day Iraq, and marks the New York debut of his film The Ballad of Special Ops Cody. The opening reception will be held on January 9, 2020 from 6pm - 8pm and the exhibition will remain on view through February 22nd.

Rakowitz’s ongoing project, The invisible enemy should not exist, was first shown in 2007 at the former Lombard-Freid Gallery. For the initial iteration, Rakowitz merged data from the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, UCLA, and Interpol, to recreate artifacts that were destroyed or looted from the National Museum of Iraq following the 2003 US invasion, crafted out of Middle Eastern food packaging, Arabic newspapers, and other found media. Rakowitz’s reliefs from the Palace of Nimrud continue to inspire conversations about colonialism, preservation, and the culturcide of a civilization.

For this exhibition, Rakowitz presents reliefs from “Room F,” a banquet courtyard within King Ashurnasirpal II’s 9th century BC palace built in Kalhu, the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud. By the time the palace was destroyed by ISIS in 2015, 400 of the 600 gypsum reliefs that once lined the walls had been removed by archeologists during expeditions and sent to museums in the West. In each iteration of The invisible enemy should not exist, Rakowitz and his studio team reappear the destroyed reliefs and replicate the architectural layout of the original rooms in which the panels were installed. The gaps between the reliefs reflect pieces that were extracted by the excavators, acknowledging the continued history of displacement in Iraq, creating what the artist calls a palimpsest of different moments of removal.                                                                                                                                                              

The Ballad of Special Ops Cody is on view alongside the reliefs. The stop-motion animation film centers around the unbelievable true story of an Iraqi insurgent group's attempt to convince Americans that they had taken a soldier hostage. In 2005, photographs of the alleged captive held by gunpoint surfaced. The “hostage,” instead of being a captured soldier, was actually Special Ops Cody, a popular plastic doll sold on military bases. In the film, Rakowitz brings the action figure to life voiced by a veteran of the Iraq war. Cody is on a mission to liberate votive statues from their vitrines, but afraid and unsure they remained in the Oriental Institute where they lived on display. Rakowitz implores us to examine and honor these treasures while contemplating the human and cultural costs of the captive works we now see in museums.