It’s fair to say that the fourth plinth at Trafalgar Square has hosted some of the most startling pieces of public art in the UK. And artist Michael Rakowitz, reponsible for the latest incumbant, has carried on with that tradition — inspired by his grandmother’s Iraqi-Jewish recipes. His art work, a recreation of Iraq’s lost, lamented Winged Bull of Nineveh entitled The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist, is clad in more than 10,000 empty date syrup cans.
“The fate of the country’s date industry symbolises how much Iraq has lost since it was ravaged by war,” he explains. “Now there are only 3 million trees left instead of 30 million in the 1970s.”
The trees represent prosperity and optimism in a country where newborns are given a taste of date to encourage a sweet life, and Rakowitz feels his Lamassu, as the winged bull is known, gives something back to a London which was suffering harsh economic losses of its own at the time of Trafalgar Square’s construction.
“The fourth Plinth was left empty in 1841 because money ran out to erect a statue on it,” he explains. When he entered the competition to fill it in 2016, he was already building the Lamassu for a site in Chicago.
“It struck me that the length — 14 feet— was the exact length of the fourth Plinth. And when I read that in 1849 the British archaeologist Sir Austen Henry Layard discovered the original Lamassu of Nineveh, it seemed meant to be.”
The Nineveh Lamassu had been standing for 2700 years until ISIS destroyed it in 2015. Rakowitz has taken it on himself to recreate more than 7000 precious artefacts destroyed in Iraq since 2003.
“Some of them, all ghosts of the originals made in cheap materials, rather than elaborate replicas, are in collections — the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum in New York have some — and others are in my studio in Chicago.”
He credits a childhood visit to the British Museum for starting his love affair with Iraqi artefacts. It was where he first saw his first lamassus and visited the reconstructed throne room of Nineveh.
“My grandparents left Baghdad in 1946, a few years after a major pogrom, and moved their import-export business to New York,” he explains. “I grew up in their house and began to understand the significance of an odd thing my mother said when the Gulf War broke out in 1991 as my younger brothers and I were just becoming aware of our heritage: ‘There are no Iraqi restaurants in New York,’ she told us, and I realised she meant Iraq was only known for by ordinary Americans for oil and war.”
Rakowitz, whose 2010 show at Tate Modern made connections between Saddam Hussein’s regime and Star Wars movies,was back in London this year with his wife Lori, and children Renee, 8 and four-year-old Jude for his statue’s unveiling. Naturally there was a pop-up cafe to celebrate, serving date and ginger cake from Israeli restaurant Honey & Co., along with Silan wa Rashi, an Iraqi breakfast dish featuring date syrup.
A limited-edition artwork featuring a date syrup can and a recipe booklet also went on sale, along with an apron, spoon and tea-towel commemorating the installation: “My desire was to extend the project beyond the Plinth to people’s cupboards and bellies and create objects people could use rather than souvenirs,” he explains.
He has never visited Iraq.
“To go there on an American passport would seem wrong, when I know so many refugees who can’t go back there themselves; including those who helped me import Iraqi date syrup and are now living in a camp in Jordan.
“They have said to me: ‘When we go back, you’ll come with us’ — and that seems like it would be the right time to go.”
The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist will remain on display on the Fourth Plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square until March 2020
