Michael Rakowitz uses the novel charm of everyday things to excite new and oblique approaches to loaded geopolitical subject matter. This is most evident in his delicate reworking of food packaging, such as those found to wrap dates of Middle Eastern origin, into replica assemblages of ancient Mesopotamian artifacts that are both under threat by client-statist wars and the looting that occurs in their wake. Beyond his practice, Rakowitz is known as an artist of great integrity who practices what he preaches; the artist withdrew from the Whitney Biennale as a form of protest against the museums Vice Chairman who owns a private security firm which was implicated in tear gassing "alien" asylum seekers at the US border. Instead of marginalizing foreign cultures through the rhetorical misrepresentation of who they are and what they stand for, Rakowitz brings disparate people together through wry political scenarios that defamiliarize glib stereotypes. For example, in his Enemy Kitchen project, American school children learn how to cook and share Iraqi food as a way to introduce alternative discourses about a "demonized" population.