The Flesh Is Yours, The Bones Are Ours
By ALISON REILLY
Michael Rakowitz’s latest exhibition spans two prominent Chicago spaces: the Graham Foundation in the Gold Coast and Rhona Hoffman Gallery in the West Loop. The Flesh Is Yours, The Bones Are Ours designates architectural ornamentation as a starting point for exploring the broader social and cultural histories that become legible in the facades of buildings. The body of work was first presented as part of the 2015 Istanbul Biennial: Rakowitz installed the work in two adjacent rooms at the Galata Greek Primary School in the Karaköy neighborhood of Istanbul. With its relocation to Chicago, Rakowitz embeds new meaning into his extended study of the relationships of designers to their larger social strata.
The concurrent exhibitions weave together the complex histories of Armenian artisans, specifically Art Nouveau mold-maker Garabet Cezayirliyan, with the built environments of modern-day Istanbul and Chicago. Rakowitz collaborated with Kemal Cimbiz, an apprentice of Cezayirliyan who now operates the atelier, to create a series of plaster casts of architectural ornaments from Cezayirliyan’s original molds. These casts, made from a plaster aggregate of ground animal bones, fill the ground floor galleries of the Graham Foundation. The stark-white molds are arranged directly on the floor, inches from each other, with some casually stacked against the walls, imitating the layout of Cezayirliyan’s atelier. The molds are pristine—immune to the passing of time and unlike the weathered facades of the buildings that house their designs. In these rooms, similar to the installation at the Galata School, Rakowitz leaves no path for visitors to walk—the decorative frames and flourishes can only be observed from a distance.
Alongside the ornate replicas are Rakowitz’s own delicate designs, inspired by Cezayirliyan but with a darker twist: these molds are made from the bones of dogs that were banished from Istanbul in 1910 in an effort to modernize the city. With this decision, Rakowitz highlights the use of animal bones as strengthener for plaster casts while calling attention to the expulsion of an estimated 80,000 dogs from Istanbul to the island of Sivriada. Further, Rakowitz uses the banishment of the dogs as a metaphor for the genocide of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915, a tragedy that the Turkish government still fails to recognize. Through his poetic use of materials and metaphor, Rakowitz revives the legacy of Armenian craftsmanship that is built quite literally into the skeletal system of the city.
At Rhona Hoffman Gallery, a few miles away, the walls are draped with frottage rubbings of architectural fragments designed by Armenians like Cezayirliyan. Rakowitz, with members from the Armenian community still living in Istanbul, traced over the actual facades in order to create permanent reminders of the influence of Armenian craftsmen on the development of modern Turkish society. Through the process of isolating, tracing, and replicating these forms, Rakowitz generates new historical narratives about the relationship of Turkey to its minority ethnic populations. He identifies the influence of Armenian design on the tapestry of an ancient city as it moved towards modernization, and he acknowledges the presence of this distinct aesthetic that still haunts the city.
The rubbings installed on the walls at Rhona Hoffman surround several large glass vitrines filled with pieces of bones, newspaper clippings, and postcards – Rakowitz’s own collection of found artifacts are used to illustrate the complex relationships between the physical infrastructures of cities and the people who occupy them. The vitrines also reference Chicago directly: Rakowitz places two newspaper clippings side-by-side and describes, in black marker directly on the glass, how the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 and the Great Fire of Pera (a district in Istanbul now known as Beyoğlu) in 1870 both contributed to the use of stone in place of wood for future buildings. Rakowitz notes that with this change architects like Louis Sullivan, who moved to Chicago in 1893, redesigned cities with Art Nouveau facades.
At times, Rakowitz's idiosyncratic historical parallels seems to strike a false note; one might rightly question the slipperiness of associating the removal of 80,000 dogs from Istanbul with fin-de-siècle Armenian design. However, the poetry of his imaginative pairings quietly honors those that have died while pushing his audience to consider the hands that build their own cities.
The Flesh Is Yours, The Bones Are Ours is on display at Rhona Hoffman Gallery and the Graham Foundation until August 16, 2016.
Top image: Michael Rakowitz, The Flesh Is Yours, The Bones Are Ours, Installation view, Graham Foundation, 2016. Photograph by RCH|EKH art documentation.