Join contemporary artist Rayyane Tabet on a tour of his exhibition Rayyane Tabet / Alien Property, which tells the story of the ninth-century B.C.E. stone reliefs excavated in the early 20th century at Tell Halaf, Syria and their subsequent destruction, loss, or dispersal to museum collections around the world, including The Met. The exhibition examines the circuitous journey of The Met’s four reliefs, which came to the Museum under the aegis of the World War II–era Alien Property Custodian Act. It also highlights the very personal connection of the reliefs to contemporary artist Rayyane Tabet (born 1983).
In 2016, as part of his quixotic quest to re-unify the extant Tell Halaf frieze through his own artistic practice, Rayyane Tabet approached The Met with a request to produce charcoal rubbings of the Museum's reliefs. Tabet was inspired in part by his great-grandfather, Faek Borkhoche, who was hired by the French authorities under the French Mandate for Syria to be an administrator at the site of von Oppenheim’s excavation, but in actuality was sent to spy on the German excavator. Through his intervention in the Museum’s galleries of Ancient Near Eastern Art, Tabet seeks to explore the charged and entangled relationship between family stories, major political and social events, and the history of the encyclopedic museum.
