Artist Lecture- Wafaa Bilal

Wafaa Bilal pushes the limits of the expected as an artist. Many, if not all, of his projects come from a personal conflict, experience, or curiosity that has inflicted his life at some point or time. During his lecture at UNR he touched on some of the platforms in which he bases much of his artwork around. Conflict zone vs. Comfort Zone, Aesthetic pleasure vs. Aesthetic pain, Virtual platform vs. Physical platform, and the body has it's own language which leads to dynamic work. He spoke about how goes through the process of considering each of these "zones" and platforms and how he incorporates all of these in his decision making and thought processing to create dynamic work. In Wafaa's words, "dynamic work is a platform in which all possible end-states are known, this allows participant to narrate some of the work."
Wafaa includes himself in a physical way in many of his pieces. In his project "Dog or Iraqi" he polled people to see if they would rather 'waterboard' a dog or an Iraqi human being, if the results turned out that more people answered with an Iraqi, he would waterboard himself. Eventually PETA shut the project down, but as a result of his poll outcomes, he held to his word and chose to waterboard himself, putting himself in severe danger.

Wafaa's brother and father were both killed in the Iraqi war. Losing both his brother and his father inspired him to create artworks that will raise awareness of the amounts of deaths in the war and how it really effects both Iraqi and American people. In his project ...and Counting Wafaa examines the invisibility of Iraqi deaths and turned his own body into a canvas for a 24-hr live art performance. Each soldier (both American and Iraqi) casualty was represented by one dot on his back in geographical map with the dots placed where they died. The 5,000 dead American soldiers are represented by red dots and the 100,000 dead Iraqi soldiers are represented by white-UV ink. During the 24-hr tattoo performance period, people read off names of the dead aloud.
Wafaa's current project, 3rdi (third eye), involves a camera which has been surgically attached to the back of Wafaa's head. The camera snaps photos spontaneously, one per minute, to capture his daily life. The purpose is to objectively portray the past by use of random photos. By completely removing the necessity of his own choice or preference, ability to capture what he wants by his point of view and finger, these photos are out of his control. The camera is wired to a lightweight laptop which holds a 3G wireless connection so each photo is instantly updated to the 3rdi website.

Domestic Tension is the name of the project that seemed to get Wafaa the most notoriety. He locked himself in an art exhibit in a small enclosed area with a paintball gun, controlled by public's use of a web-game, aimed in his living space giving people the opportunity to shoot at him at all times of the day for a full month. This project was also inspired by the Iraqi war and loss of his brother and father. The objective of this project was to raise awareness of virtual war and privacy, and/or the lack thereof privacy and safety. This project took its toll on Wafaa and was much more difficult than he had assumed. His sense of vulnerability grew more with each shot. He learned that people are much more willing to shoot someone than he had expected, he got little to no sympathy. Wafaa live blogged by recording videos that he uploaded to the same site where the public would access to gain the ability to shoot at him in his gallery space. The paintball gun shot out yellow paint balls, and when a student asked why he chose yellow paint, he said that the yellow seemed like a good color because it was representational of the yellow "support troops" ribbon.

Wafaa is one of the bravest artist's I have come across. He puts himself in the center of his projects, no matter how dangerous they are, he is willing to prove what he believes in by physically making himself vulnerable. He is passionate about the war and troops safety and rights, and I think his work is very representational of his personality. Getting to hear him speak about his work made me realize what risks some people take to do what they love and stand up for what they believe in, and I found him truly inspirational as an artist and as a human being.