GE1110 Exploring Contemporary Art: Performing Arts: Wafaa Bilal

Iraqi-born artist Wafaa Bilal, an Assistant Arts Professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, is known internationally for his on-line performative and interactive works provoking dialogue about international politics and internal dynamics.

EDUCATION
2003 MFA, Art and Technology, School of the Art Institute of Chicago Chicago, IL
1999 BFA, Summa Cum Laude, University of New Mexico Albuquerque, NM
1985-90 BA (equivalent) Geography and Geology, University of Baghdad Baghdad, Iraq

APPOINTMENTS
2008-12 Present Assistant Arts Professor, Photography, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University
2004-08 Adjunct Assistant Professor, Photography, Art and Technology, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
2003-05 Instructor, Photography, Advanced Video, Harold Washington College, Chicago, IL

AWARDS AND SCHOLARSHIPS
2012 New York Foundation of the Arts (NYFA)
2011-12 Artist-in-Residence, Lower Manhattan Culture Center, LMCC, New York
2011 Freedom to Create Commended Artist Award
2010 The Kindal Achievement Award
2008 Editor’s Choice Best Book of 2008, Booklist Magazine 2008

For his current project, the 3rdi, Bilal had a camera surgically implanted on the back of his head to spontaneously transmit images to the web 24 hours a day – a statement on surveillance, the mundane and the things we leave behind.
3rdi

Bilal’s 2010 work “…And Counting” similarly used his own body as a medium. His back was tattooed with a map of Iraq and dots representing Iraqi and US casualties – the Iraqis in invisible ink seen only under a black light.

Bilal’s 2007 installation, Domestic Tension, also addressed the Iraq war. Bilal spent a month in a Chicago gallery with a paintball gun that people could shoot at him over the internet. The Chicago Tribune called it “one of the sharpest works of political art to be seen in a long time” and named him 2008 Artist of the Year.