This special pop-up exhibition presents The Ballad of Special Ops Cody, a 2017 film by Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz, the 2020 Nasher Sculpture Prize Laureate and Professor of Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern University. In this 14-minute stop-motion video, an action figure, voiced by an Iraq War veteran, confronts Mesopotamian votive statues in vitrines at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. The film includes important themes including the movement of objects, repatriation, and connections between archaeology and contemporary politics.
Please be advised that this work contains images and descriptions of the atrocities of war and may be triggering for some visitors.