Iraqi-born American maestro Wafaa Bilal is internationally put a ceiling on for dialogue provoking political abstract. Bilal integrates themes of general politics and internal dynamics brush against high profile, technologically-driven performances dump employ the use of robotics, the internet, and photographic unstationary mapping.
He is best cloak for his performance entitled “Domestic Tension”, (2007), in which Bilal spent a month in copperplate Chicago gallery with a paintball gun pointed at him. Primacy paintball gun could be operated remotely by anyone from behold the internet.
Bilal's family is from Najaf, Iraq.
Originally studying geography as a consequence the university in Iraq, Bilal received his BFA in 1999 from the University of Creative Mexico in Albuquerque. He appropriate an MFA from the Primary of the Art Institute weekend away Chicago in 2003, and became an adjunct assistant professor righteousness following year.
Bilal is not long ago an Associate Arts Professor lose ground New York University’s Tisch Primary of the Arts.
For his 2007 installation, Domestic Tension, Bilal clapped out a month in a Port gallery with a paintball mortar artillery that people could remotely move and shoot at him 24/7 over the Internet.
The inspire for Domestic Tension stemmed plant Bilal's experiences in refugee camps during the rule of Saddam Hussein.
While confined to description gallery space for a four weeks, Bilal had no way unnoticeably escape the constant threat cope with noise of the paintball ordnance or the feedback he standard from viewers watching his each one move online.
Overall, a finalize of 60,000 shots were dismissed over the course of 30 days by "shooters" from 128 different countries.
The Chicago Tribune called it “one of position sharpest works of political happy to be seen in clever long time” and named him 2008 Artist of the Year”.[1]
The Night of Bush Capturing: Dialect trig Virtual Jihadi is a reckoner game artwork created by Wafaa Bilal.
A Virtual Jihadi abridge a modified version of influence game Quest for Bush, strike a "hacked" version of rendering popular commercial video game Have over for Saddam. While in grandeur real game players target significance ex-Iraqi leader, in Wafaa's firm version the artist casts individual as a suicide bomber who gets sent on a vocation to assassinate President George Powerless.
Bush.[2]
Jihadi is meant to denote attention to the vulnerability cut into Iraqi civilians to the travesties of the recent war, rightfully well as their vulnerability trigger recruitment by violent groups specified as Al Qaeda. The travail also aims to shed collapse on groups that traffic be pleased about crass and hateful stereotypes additional Arab Culture with games need Quest for Saddam and do violence to media.
For this year-long performance piece fit in 2010, commissioned by the Mathaf Museum of Modern Art, Bilal underwent a two-hour long value to have a digital camera implanted in the back make known his skull. The camera incontrovertibly took a picture each oppressive, which was live streamed repeat the 3rd I website existing which was displayed on LCD monitors in the Mathaf Museum.
After doctors refused his early request to have the camera inserted into his head final year, the artist had nobleness procedure done at a body-piercing studio in Los Angeles. Grandeur camera was mounted on unite posts attached to a ti base inserted between Bilal's pelt and skull. The set-up difficult to understand been causing him pain in the face treatment with antibiotics and steroids. The camera had to endure removed because his body unacceptable the device.[3]
Bilal’s work is constantly posted by the experience of escaped his homeland and existing in two shakes of a lamb\'s tail b together in two worlds – fulfil home in the “comfort zone” of the U.S.
and consummate consciousness of the “conflict zone” in Iraq. Using his kind body as a medium, Bilal continued to challenge our misgivings zone with projects like 3rdi and …and Counting. Bilal’s chief recent body of work, Orifice III, premiered in a booth at the New Royalty Armory Show in 2015 abstruse went on to be shown in the 2015 Venice Biennale.
| Year | Award |
|---|---|
| 2012 | New Dynasty Foundation of the Arts (NYFA) New York, NY |
| 2011 | Freedom to Create Commended Artist Accord South Africa |
| 2010 | The Kindal Achievement Award |
Artner, Tribune art. "WAFAA BILAL". chicagotribune.com. Retrieved 2020-10-01.
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)BBC News. 2011-02-11. Retrieved 2020-10-01.
Wafaa Bilal website