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This talk centers on Michael Rakowitz, who reimagines the cultural heritage of Iraq and Syria through the creative reassembly of artifacts blown apart by war and/or looted over the long history of colonization. By focusing particularly on two interventions in Malmö (Rakowitz’s exhibition The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist in 2019, and his subsequent performance dinner Dar Al Sulh in 2022, both at Malmö Konsthall) this talk explores how landscapes come to be re-placed, particularly through artistic hauntings, and what that means for the production and entanglements of landscape, art, and memory.

Adam Lundberg is a PhD candidate in the Department of Human Geography at Uppsala University. His research is situated at the intersection of cultural geography, memory studies, critical theory, and art history. Focusing on the work of two contemporary visual artists — Yael Bartana and Michael Rakowitz — Lundberg’s thesis explores critical artistic interventions that engage with and materialize the complexities of diaspora and displacement, of both people and objects, and how these interventions reshape and re-place landscapes marked by ruination.

Michael Rakowitz, photo by Wadi Mhiri.