Still from Domestic Tension (aka Shoot an Iraqi). Courtesy Wafaa Bilal
Professor Wafaa Bilal is a Visiting Artist at the Regis Center for Art at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis this semester. On November 1, 2018, he gave a talk on select projects from his extensive body of work including Domestic Tension (aka Shoot an Iraqi), Virtual Jihadi and the 3rdi. Bilal’s work blends technology and performance to pose questions about geopolitical and personal realities, with an emphasis on dynamic encounters and relational antagonism as strategies to engage viewers in dialogue.
Iraqi-born artist Wafaa Bilal, an Associate Arts Professor in the Department of Photoraphy and Imaging, is known internationally for his on-line performative and interactive works provoking dialogue about international politics and internal dynamics. Bilal’s work is constantly informed by the experience of fleeing his homeland and existing simultaneously in two worlds – his home in the “comfort zone” of the U.S. and his consciousness of the “conflict zone” in Iraq. Using his own body as a medium, Bilal continued to challenge our comfort zone with projects like 3rdi and ...and Counting.