The Low-Res Visiting Artist & Scholar Lecture Series resource guides contain upcoming speakers' biographies, articles, video and audio content, related publications in the Flaxman Library, and additional online resources. These guides may be used in preparation for the public lecture, studio visits, and post-lecture discussion.
Michael Rakowitz: Monday, July 15, 7:00 - 8:30 p.m. CT
SAIC Ballroom
Michael Rakowitz (b. 1973, Long Island, NY) is an Iraqi-American artist working at the intersection of problem-solving and troublemaking. His work has appeared in venues worldwide including dOCUMENTA (13), P.S.1, MoMA, MassMOCA, Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Palais de Tokyo, the 16th Biennale of Sydney, the 10th and 14th Istanbul Biennials, Sharjah Biennial 8, Tirana Biennale, National Design Triennial at the Cooper-Hewitt, Transmediale 05, FRONT Triennial in Cleveland, and CURRENT: LA Public Art Triennial.
He was awarded the 2018-2020 Fourth Plinth commission in London’s Trafalgar Square. He is the recipient of the 2020 Nasher Prize; the 2018 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts; 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.
Solo projects and exhibitions include Creative Time, Tate Modern in London, The Wellin Museum of Art, MCA Chicago, Lombard Freid Gallery and Jane Lombard Gallery in New York, SITE Santa Fe, Galerie Barbara Wien in Berlin, Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Chicago, Malmö Konsthall, Tensta Konsthall, and Kunstraum Innsbruck, and Waterfronts - England’s Creative Coast.
From 2019-2020, a survey of Rakowitz’s work traveled from Whitechapel Gallery in London, to Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea in Torino, to the Jameel Arts Centre in Dubai.
Upcoming solo exhibition venues include Galerie Barbara Wien, Berlin; Stavanger Art Museum, Norway; and Green Art Gallery, Dubai. He was recently granted a commission for a public project on the topic of Archaeology and Migration Flows for the Municipality of The Hague.
Rakowitz lives and works in Chicago.
Michael Rakowitz - Art21
Michael Rakowitz, Frank Duveneck
The Modern Art Notes Podcast | January 21, 2021 | Please note this podcast does not provide transcripts
A Conversation with Thought-Provoking Iraqi Jewish American Artist Michael Rakowitz
The Global Lunchbox Podcast | May 14, 2021 | Please note this podcast does not provide transcripts
Michael Rakowitz, Archaeology Now, Epic Journeys and Facial Disfigurement
BBC RADIO 3 [Audio] | June 12, 2019 | Please note this program does not provide transcripts
Michael Rakowitz: Backstroke of the West by
Iraqi-American Michael Rakowitz's provocative multimedia projects confront popular political histories, particularly those of the US and Iraq. Whether serving Iraqi cuisine from his Enemy Kitchen food truck alongside Iraqi refugees and war vets, or recreating items lost during the 2003 looting of the National Museum in Baghdad, Rakowitz works to address the trauma created by Saddam Hussein's regime and the US. The book explores ten of Rakowitz's most renowned works and a new commission. The accompanying texts, drawings, and personal commentary offer a multi-faceted look at the artist's entire practice, demonstrating art's ability to engage and confront the viewer and to generate socio-political commentary across broad social and cultural divides.
Michael Rakowitz: projets récents sur Bagdad et Montréal by 
Michael Rakowitz: I'm good at love, I'm good at hate, it's in between I freeze by
An artist charts the historical context and aftermath of a concert-by Leonard Cohen at the Ramallah Cultural Palace in Palestine-that never happened. Michael Rakowitz's project I'm good at love, I'm good at hate, it's in between I freeze(2009-ongoing) charts the historical context and aftermath of a concert that never happened. In 2009 Leonard Cohen was scheduled to perform in Israel. Because of increasing pressure from pro-Palestinian voices to dissuade Cohen from performing in Israel, a twin event in Palestine was organized. Amid protests and claims that the latter concert was a token show of solidarity and a hollow attempt to appease demonstrators, the concert was boycotted and eventually canceled. But the story, as Rakowitz's work demonstrates, did not end there. Conjoining the cultural histories of Palestine and Israel with the ethical dilemmas faced by performers under the conditions of a boycott, this volume, the first in the Research/Practiceseries, brings to light the research that went into this multifaceted work and plots the future arc of its trajectory.
Michael Rakowitz: Circumventions by
To circumvent is to get around the rules, to find loopholes, to initiate idiosyncratic solutions, to employ subtle metaphor to highlight problematic situations. Michael Rakowitz does just that, combining architecture, design, agitational techniques and a poetic sensibility to create installations and performances that touch on issues of power, visibility and memory. His paraSITe shelters are custom-built tents for homeless people that attach to the hot exhaust vents of buildings, creating not only a heated abode but one much more visible than a cardboard box. Rise conducts the smell of Chinese pastries from a Chinatown bakery to the decidedly un-local art exhibition in an adjacent building. And in Minaret, Rakowitz uses an alarm clock bought in Jordan to broadcast the adhan, the Muslim call to prayer, to a city where minarets are otherwise quieted.
The Interventionists by
Art made to attach to buildings or to be given away? Wearable art for street demonstrations or art that sets up a booth at a trade show? This is the art of the interventionists, who trespass into the everyday world to raise our awareness of injustice and other social problems. These artists don't preach or proselytize; they give us the tools to form our own opinions and create our own political actions. The Interventionists, which accompanies an exhibit at MASS MoCA, serves as a handbook to this new and varied work. It's a user's guide to art that is exciting, provocative, unexpected, inspiring (artistically and politically), and fun. From Michael Rakowitz's inflatable homeless shelter and William Pope.L's "Black Factory" truck with pulverizer, gift shop, and giant inflatable igloo to the Biotic Baking Brigade's political pie-throwing, the art of The Interventionists surveys a growing genre and offers a guide for radical social action.The book classifies the artists according to their choice of tactics: the Nomads, who create mobile projects; Reclaim the Streets, artists who act in public places; Tools for Resistance: Ready to Wear, artists who produce fashion for political action; and the Experimental University, artists whose work engages pedagogy and theory. The accompanying text includes essays by noted scholars putting the work in a broader cultural and social context as well as texts by the artists themselves.
Feast by
The companion to a one-of-a-kind exhibition at the University of Chicago's Smart Museum of Art, Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art explores the role of the meal in contemporary art. Feast offers the first survey of the artist-orchestrated meal: since the 1930s, the act of sharing food and drink has been used to advance aesthetic goals and foster critical engagement with the culture of the moment. Both exhibition catalogue and reader, this richly illus- trated book offers an interdisciplinary exploration of the art of the meal and its relationship to questions about hospitality, politics, and culture. From the Italian Futurists' banquets in the 1930s, to 1960s and '70s conceptual and performative work, to the global prevalence of socially engaged practices today, Feast considers a diverse group of artists who have transformed the meal into a compelling artistic medium. After an introductory essay by curator Stephanie Smith, the book includes new interviews with over twenty contributing artists and reprinted excerpts of classic texts. It also features a selection of contextual essays contributed by an international group of critics, writers, curators, and scholars.