Wafaa Bilial’s work was so interesting. As I was looking through his works, A Call really stood out to me. Its interesting to see how he premiered the work. His visa into Iran, so he started a video chat to show the work from New York.
Another piece I thought was interesting was his work Domestic Tension. I really liked how he utilized the paintball machine. I also like how he documented the process as well with all of the videos. He also incorporates outside input as well, setting it up in just a way that users could log in to a website and contact him. This would turn into shots fired from the paintball gun. He did this for 30 days, which is a really long time. From the time I watched the final video, I was shocked to see how much the room had changed.
Another work really stood out to me, “and Counting…” This was one of my favorite pieces I saw because of the message itself. He had a borderless map of Iraq tattooed on his back with cities names. Then he had two series of dots tatooed around the cities. These represented the casualties of Iraqis and Americans. While he was getting them tattooed on his back, people were reading the names of the victims. I thought this was really powerful because its a way to memorialize those who suffered during the conflict in Iraq. He also did it to remember his brother.
