EFA STUDIO PROGRAM: Member Artists
Wafaa Bilal
Wafaa Bilal is an Iraqi-born American artist whose practice stems from the extreme tensions between the cultural spaces he occupies—his home in the comfort zone of the US, and his heart in the conflict zone of Iraq. He is known internationally for his provocative, performative and interactive works exploring international and interpersonal politics post-conflict. The 2007 installation, Domestic Tension, informally titled Shoot an Iraqi, archived such friction head-on: occupying a “bedroom” containing a robotic paintball-gun in Chicago’s west-loop Flatfile Gallery, he invited audiences to shoot at him over the internet. The Chicago Tribune called it “one of the sharpest works of political art in a long time,” naming him Artist of the Year. His work is in the permanent collections of LACMA and Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Photography; international collectors include Qatar’s Arab Museum of Modern Art. Bilal is an Arts Professor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.
