Michael Rakowitz's survey exhibition "Allspice" at the Acropolis Museum in Athens explores themes of cultural displacement, looting, and historical narrative through works like his series "The invisible enemy should not exist" (2007–), which reconstructs looted artifacts from Baghdad's National Museum of Iraq using Arabic food wrappers and newspapers. The show also features his 2004 video "Return," documenting his effort to import Iraqi dates labeled as "product of Iraq" to the US after decades of sanctions, and includes interventions with the museum's own collection, such as a Cypriot head he linked to Assyrian art.
The exhibition matters because it directly challenges Western-centric historical narratives by asserting Mesopotamia's foundational contributions to civilization—writing, the wheel, agriculture—over Athens's disproportionate credit. It also draws a powerful parallel between the looting of Iraqi antiquities after the 2003 US invasion and the ongoing restitution dispute over the Parthenon Marbles, which the Acropolis Museum was built to house. By pairing an Iraqi-American artist's work with a venue symbolizing Greece's own restitution claims, the show becomes a joint statement against imperialist looting and a call for solidarity among nations dispossessed of their cultural heritage.