Artist Lecture- Wafaa Bilal

Before the lecture I did some "googling" on Wafaa Bilal and visited his website. When looking at his website there were so many links that I didn't know what to do at first. I decided to just start clicking on the links to see what would come up and found that a lot of the videos had been removed so I wasn't able to see a whole lot before the lecture. I was confused at first by what most of his work was about. I found some things that had to do with his brother and how he was killed in bombing in Iraq but nothing further.

I thoroughly enjoyed the lecture. I don't think that If I had heard Bilal speak about his work that I would have the same appreciation that I do now about what it is that he is trying to accomplish through his work. There is one problem that I have with a piece of his. When he took the video game The Night of Bush Capturing: A Virtual Jihadi and rendered himself in the game, Bilal stated that his work is to bring awareness to the American public on the Iraqi viewpoint. I feel that even though there hasn't been any violence as an outcome of his video game there was protest. I am afraid that that is where the violence starts is with protesting.

Unfortunately my second question about his work with famous paintings I was not able to bring up since he didn't touch on those works.

I thought Bilal's response to a question by one of the people in the audience was interesting. Someone asked him in so many words what he thought about turning Iraq into a democracy. Bilal stated that he thought it was a good thing, however that he thinks it is going to take 25-50 years before Iraq will be able to stand on it's own as a democracy without U.S. forces over there to help with the violence.

Even though Bilal thinks what the U.S. is trying to do in Iraq is a good thing he still uses his work to show the American public the other side, the Iraqi side.

I hope for his sake and the American public's sake that he accomplishes what he has set out to do.

I want to say that I was mostly impacted be his piece "Domestic Tension", where he places himself in a gallery for 30 (31) days and can be shot at by a paintball gun controlled be viewers on the internet. I don't remember ever hearing about an artist making a piece to help themselves emotionally get through a traumatic event, such as that of loosing a loved one. I'm not sure that it completely helped since some professionals have told him that he now suffers from PTSD but apparently from what he says it did help him with the death of his brother. I can only hope that my work will in the future be able to help me deal with "life's unexpected casualties".

http://www.wafaabilal.com/index.html