Wafaa Bilal Illuminates the Politically Absurd

In 2007, three years after his brother’s killing by an American drone strike in Iraq, artist Wafaa Bilal developed and performed "Domestic Tension," a seminal work that laid bare the chilling realities of modern warfare. Confining himself to a Chicago gallery for one month, the Iraqi-born artist invited online users to shoot him with a robotically and remotely controlled paintball gun, in effect visualizing the profane anti-Arab sentiment that loomed across post-9/11 America. Broadcast 24/7 via a webcam and an online chatroom, Bilal’s makeshift room—dripping wet with the remnants of yellow paintballs—had rapidly transformed into a portrait of prejudice. From the comfort of their homes, users deployed repeated acts of non-lethal violence, resulting in 70,000 shots over the course of 30 days. Just as the practice of drone warfare was coming into prevalence, Bilal penetrated the public’s conscience by capturing the callousness of autonomous combat.

Bilal, who is an Arts Professor in NYU Tisch’s Department of Photography and Imaging, has long positioned his practice at the crossroads of performance and technology. His growing body of work reflects a lifelong examination of international and interpersonal politics, and with it a clear-eyed panorama of today’s geopolitical landscape. With Indulge Me, last year’s major survey of his career at MCA Chicago, Bilal revived "Domestic Tension" in exhibit form—in this case a recreation of the gallery’s post-performance conditions, including a video diary—alongside multiple other projects that convey his capacity to bend time, space, and distance.

“The work of Indulge Me spans 2007 to the present time, but it has predicted many things that were ahead of its time, including the drone warfare, which was in response to my brother’s killing in Iraq in 2004,” Bilal said during a recent conversation over Zoom. “We see the exhibition become more and more relevant simply because of the politics we have seen during the run of the show. What I am hoping out of all of this is that now we might see the reality of what might happen, and that gives me hope for people to step up and reclaim democracy.”

Throughout the exhibit, Indulge Me showcased Bilal mining physical and metaphorical realms that have regularly characterized his work. In the case of his archival project "Rendering of Canto III," Bilal presented a golden bust of Saddam Hussein slated next to a digital rendering of said bust orbiting the Earth. The tongue-in-cheek effigy takes aim at Hussein’s own egotism, lampooning the ruler and his party, the Ba’athists, about old rumors that they intended to launch golden busts into orbit to keep a watchful eye over Iraq. The exhibit also restored trailblazing archival projects like the 2010-11 piece "3rdi." A departure from the prescience that defined "Domestic Tension," "3rdi" saw Bilal quite literally position his lens backwards by surgically mounting a camera to the backside of his skull. The apparatus automatically captured one image per minute to be uploaded to a public website. The resulting collection of images—an exercise in systematically eliminating artist subjectivity—were presented as a large-scale projection on a 14-foot screen for Indulge Me.

For decades this has been Bilal’s work: extending a discerning eye toward the politics connecting his native Iraq to his current home in the U.S. The juxtaposition courses through the artist’s many pieces whereby he examines the contradictions and parallels between what he calls the “conflict zone” in his homeland and the “comfort zone” in the United States. And while the findings rarely deliver a sense of solace, often challenging audiences to interrogate their own passivity, Bilal’s persistence recalls hard-won truths about the immigrant experience. 

“I said it many times when I arrived to the States: I witnessed my own apocalypse—the loss of everything,” Bilal said. “As a result, when I was doing the artwork, I was antagonizing people without knowing that antagonization is a form of engagement. [Indulge Me] was so important in today’s politics because no institution wanted to give voice to an immigrant like me and to the disenchantment. Because the politics are strong, they tend to shy away, and that’s why the MCA took a huge risk.”

To date, Bilal has now lived longer in the United States than in his native Iraq. Born in 1966, he eventually escaped Saddam Hussein’s reign in 1991 and took refuge in Saudi Arabia, where he taught art to children. The following year he traveled to the United States and began studying to earn his BFA from the University of New Mexico—and later his MFA at the Art Institute of Chicago. Now, with a seemingly endless cycle of global political turmoil as material, Bilal’s often provocative works have come to serve as something of a cautionary voice on authoritarian regimes—a thread that appears repeatedly in his satirizations of Hussein. 

“Dictatorship doesn’t happen, dictatorship is manufactured,” he said, recalling observations of Iraq’s transitional years entering Hussein’s rule. “It is based on fear of within and fear of the other. As an Iraqi who lived in Iraq for 27 years, [I saw] the birth of dictatorship when Saddam took over by simply subverting the power and becoming the sole power, silencing every voice.”

There are decades of indicators suggesting Bilal’s appetite for the politically absurd may indeed be insatiable. But these days his energy is pulled in new and varying directions, oftentimes leading back to his work at New York University and Tisch. Beyond the success of last year’s Indulge Me, Bilal continues to innovate in his work as a professor and researcher at NYU, confidently embracing the potential for AI across his practice. Last December, he was honored at the 2025 NYU Innovators Dinner as a First-Time Discloser, positioning him alongside NYU’s cohort of faculty innovators and celebrating his groundbreaking creative research. The project of interest is currently undergoing a patent submission for a new medical device that leverages AI technology. Bilal strikes an optimistic—if still realistic—tone when discussing his adoption of the dominant tech of our time.

“I was working with my partner who is a professor at NYU Abu Dhabi, and we came across how the very technology that I was engaging with in creating interactive artwork is going to be a technology in the future of medicine,” Bilal said. “We’ll call it a technological device that detects early cancer in women with the help of AI. We’re working with an integrated bioelectronic lab at NYU Abu Dhabi, and the technology doesn't exist yet, so we are giving birth to something massive in terms of detection.”

For Bilal, this interdisciplinary approach is not only a driving force in his own work, but also a blueprint for how he hopes the next generation of artists can welcome new technologies. Still, he recognizes the generational gaps that sometimes stymie that natural evolution.

“Every generation has their signature, and every generation before that kind of frowns on the new one,” he said. “I teach technology, performance, and digital photography, so we saw that when people frowned upon my generation for embracing technology.”

Publicly, these rapid advancements have at times led to unexamined attitudes: on one hand outright skepticism, on the other eager endorsement. Bilal remains neither shortsighted nor naive. He has been victimized by technology falling in the wrong hands, and empowered by its assistance in conveying stories of injustice. It will ultimately be the artists of our future who determine how these tools are wielded. From where he sits, he sees only promise. 

“There will always be people who misuse technology. Weapons are a misuse of technology; but on the other hand a pacemaker is technology, too. I think the new generation of artists is going to embrace what we have and it is going to be a leap. And our next leap is the connection of technology with the body. “