AMT Visiting Artists Lecture Series: Wafaa Bilal
October 5, 2011 6:15 p.m.
Kellen Auditorium, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, 66 Fifth Avenue
Free; no tickets or reservations required; seating is first-come first-served
Iraqi-born artist Wafaa Bilal is known for his on-line performance works intended to provoke dialogue about international politics. For his current project, 3rdi, Bilal had a camera surgically implanted on the back of his head that transmitted images to the Web 24 hours a day, a statement on surveillance, the mundane, and the things we leave behind. Bilal’s 2010 work, ...And Counting, similarly used his own body as a medium: his back was tattooed with a map of Iraq with dots representing Iraqi and U.S. casualties of occupation, the Iraqis in invisible ink, visible only under a black light. Bilal's 2007 installation, Domestic Tension, also addressed the Iraq war: he spent a month in a Chicago gallery with a paintball gun that Internet interactive viewers could shoot at him. Bilal's work is constantly informed by the experience of fleeing his homeland and existing simultaneously in two worlds, the “comfort zone” of his U.S. home and the “conflict zone” in Iraq.
Follow us on Twitter
Find us on Facebook