Wafaa Bilal Lecture Question/Response

Question 1:

With your piece “Domestic Tension,” those that may not normally engage in political discussion through normal means are targeted. Do you think that some of these participants may have completely missed the point and the piece only furthered their obsession with violence and hate, especially against Iraqis?

Question 2:

 Often times, people will get tattooed to help cope with the loss of a loved one. Did “…and Counting” offer you any serenity in dealing with the death of your brother or the thousands of other casualties? Was the decision to permanently alter your body for the piece difficult? 

Wafaa Bilal Lecture Response

I thoroughly enjoyed Bilal’s lecture about his work. I feel he was a good public speaker and was very charismatic. Hearing him speak of his work in person helped me to understand his work better than looking at descriptions online. The quote that I found most interesting was, “I think all art is political, it just depends on which politics you choose to engage. Even making art not about politics, is a political statement.” I guess I had never thought of art making this way and assumed “political art” was just a category or style. This does make sense though.  No matter where you are, or if it was intentional, there was to be some sort of political statement in the work. Things are constantly affecting us and we are constantly reacting, whether intentional or not. Some of this force has to slip into the work being made. It’s inevitable.

Three words to define Bilal’s practice and artwork

1.  Tension

2. Engagement

3. Reality

The most interesting thing I learned about Bilal was that he spent two years in a refugee camp before getting kicked out of his country. It shows how much he really cares about making art and how dedicated he is to spreading his message. It seems as though he is constantly in danger of being injured or killed by those who call his art “terrorism,” yet he doesn’t seem to be afraid. He continues to take huge risks to produce his art.

Both of my questions were pretty much answered during the lecture.

Question 1: Bilal talked about one individual named Lucas. This person was constantly shooting, day after day. Bilal finally one day looked into the camera and talked directly to this person telling him he was going to eat and the shooting stopped. This stopped the “fun” aspect of the violence when he communicated on a human level with the shooter. Bilal often talked about instances where people hacked the system so the gun became automatic and how one hacker made an entire town’s computers fire the gun.

Question 2: From what he said about this piece it sounded as though it didn’t take him long to decide to go through with it. He mentioned something about resenting doing something on his back based on things that will change soon (the number of deaths in Iraq). He also mentioned one of his new projects will deal with his body, so it doesn’t sound like he has too much hesitation toward using his body as art.

The piece that I found the most compelling and powerful was “Dog or Iraqi.” The project was shut down because of so much protest, yet he still went through with having himself water-boarded. The footage was pretty terrifying. He wasn’t afraid to go through with this to see what pain people actually face. It was just extremely courageous of him and strengthens all that he is saying. I also found it shocking that Bilal stated that after “Domestic Tension,” he went almost a year without being able to sleep for more than a few hours because of post-traumatic stress disorder.