The 14th Istanbul Biennial, curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, positions the arts and sciences in dynamic and productive relation, and also coincides with the 100^th anniversary of the Armenian genocide. Michael Rakowitz's project draws attention to the peril of Turkey's Armenian population in the early-twentieth century. The Flesh Is Yours, The Bones Are Ours develops around the legacy of an Armenian plaster caster named Garabet Cezayirliyan, who was responsible for crafting the old moldings and friezes installed on the facades of the Art Nouveau edifices in Istanbul, many of which remain visible today. Rakowitz's work engages with this craft as an opening to larger questions about the transmission of knowledge and the maintenance of tradition as a resistance against cultural erasure.

Michael Rakowitz is an artist living and working in Chicago. He received his BFA in sculpture from Purchase College, SUNY, and his MS in visual studies from MIT. Rakowitz's art practice operates at tense sociopolitical junctures. In 1998, he initiated paraSITE, an ongoing project in which the artist custom builds inflatable shelters for homeless people that attach to the exterior outtake vents of a building's heating, ventilation, or air-conditioning systems. His work has appeared in venues worldwide, including dOCUMENTA 13, PS1, MoMA, MassMOCA, Castello di Rivoli, the 16th Sydney Biennale, the 10th Istanbul Biennial, Sharjah Biennial 8, the Tirana Biennale, the National Design Triennial at the Cooper-Hewitt, and Transmediale 05. Solo exhibitions include the Tate Modern in London, Lombard Freid Gallery in New York, Trafo Gallery in Budapest, and Kunstraum Innsbruck. His public projects, Return (2006) and Spoils (2011), were presented by Creative Time in New York. He is the recipient of a 2012 Tiffany Foundation Award; a 2008 Creative Capital Grant; a Sharjah Biennial Jury Award; a 2006 NYFA Fellowship Grant in Architecture and Environmental Structures; the 2003 Dena Foundation Award; and the 2002 Design 21 Grand Prix from UNESCO. His work features in major private and public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Neue Galerie, Kassel, Germany; the Smart Museum of Art, Chicago; the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, the Netherlands; the British Museum; the Kabul National Museum, Afghanistan; and UNESCO, Paris. Rakowitz is professor of art theory and practice at Northwestern University.