Michael Rakowitz
Born & Lives in:
USA
Location
- Chau Chak Wing Museum at the University of Sydney
Concerned with history and current events, Iraqi-American artist, Michael Rakowitz uses his work to explore pressing issues and to invite others into the conversations fostered by his public projects, installations, and events. He engages in fact-finding and makes connections with people at all opportunities, focusing on individuals involved in situations that range from the personal to the local to the geopolitical. Among his first projects is paraSITE (begun 1997), a series of inflatable homes built in consultation with people experiencing homelessness who would then occupy them. Rakowitz’s own Iraqi-Jewish heritage features prominently in many of his works, reflecting his deep connection to the country. Since 2004, with his ongoing project, RETURN, he has been attempting to import dates from Iraq into the U.S., the centrepiece of a multipart project that illustrates the cultural richness of this country in crisis.
Michael Rakowitz
Born 1973, USA
Lives and works in Chicago, USA
The Ballad of Special Ops Cody 2017
stop-motion animation, video, looped 14:42 mins
Director of photographer and editor: Robert Chase Heishman
Originally commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
Presentation at the 25th Biennale of Sydney was made possible by Rubaiya Qatar, Qatar Museums with generous assistance from The Keir Foundation
Courtesy of the artist and Green Art Gallery, Dubai
In 2005, an Iraqi insurgent group posted a photograph online of captured US soldier John Adams and threatened to behead Adams if US-held prisoners in Iraq were not set free. After a thorough search, no such person could be identified in US military records, it was revealed that ‘John Adams’ was in fact the infantry action figure, Special Ops Cody. Sold on US bases in Iraq for servicemen to send home to their families as surrogate fathers, John Adams was little more than a prop.
In The Ballad of Special Ops Cody Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz brings the doll to life with-stop motion animation. Filmed at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, the film follows Special Ops Cody as he explores museum displays of Mesopotamian votive statues taken during various colonial exploits. Urging them to leave their open vitrines, the statues, which would have served as proxy gods for those who worshipped at the temple of their deities, do not respond to Cody. Wide-eyed and unmoving, the statues remain – petrified and afraid – unable to return home.