Alum Wafaa Bilal’s First Major Survey Debuts at MCA
by Taylor Moore
In a small, white gallery space, an artist is confined to a desk and a bed.
You are viewing this man, wearing a keffiyeh scarf and heavy-duty goggles, through your computer screen, and he—available at all hours of the day—invites you to chat with him online. In the middle of the room sits a remote-controlled paintball gun. Over the 30 days he lives in the room, more than 65,000 paint pellets are fired at him.
Installation view, Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me, MCA Chicago, February 1–October 19, 2025. Photo: Bob (Robert Chase Heishman)
Installation view, Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me, MCA Chicago, February 1–October 19, 2025. Photo: Bob (Robert Chase Heishman)
This artist is School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) alum Wafaa Bilal (MFA 2003), an Iraqi American performance artist, whose project—Domestic Tension—commenting on the racist desire to “shoot an Iraqi” during the height of the War on Terror was completed during his time at SAIC. And 18 years after the piece’s debut, it will be featured alongside four other works in the first major survey of Bilal’s career at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago.
Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me, open through October 19, is curated by SAIC alum Bana Kattan (MA 2011), formerly the Pamela Alper associate curator at the MCA, and now based in New York working for the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.
Wafaa Bilal. Image courtesy of the artist
Wafaa Bilal. Image courtesy of the artist
Kattan first became familiar with Bilal 10 years ago, when she invited him to include one of his works in a group show at the New York University Abu Dhabi Art Gallery. “He was working substantially ahead of his time and he’s still doing things substantially ahead of this time,” she said.
The theme of the exhibit is “cultural cannibalism,” which Kattan defines as “a source of cultural consumption, or appropriation, that seeks to destroy, retain, assimilate, or exploit”—a concept with origins in Native American and Brazilian modernist art. Interested visitors can explore this theme in depth through the book accompanying the exhibition, which will include an essay by Kattan, a conversation between Bilal and the artist Lynn Hershman Leeson, and an essay by Bilal about his own life.
“...I wanted to create an exhibition that was not only showing archival images of something that's already happened. This is a mid-career survey. [Wafaa] will do so much more.”
The works will be interactive and, sometimes, larger than life. The first work visitors will notice will be the paint-splattered room in Domestic Tension, recreated “as if the performance had just ended.”
Installation view, Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me, MCA Chicago, February 1–October 19, 2025. Photo: Bob (Robert Chase Heishman)
Installation view, Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me, MCA Chicago, February 1–October 19, 2025. Photo: Bob (Robert Chase Heishman)
Kattan will also remount Virtual Jihadi (2008), a parody first-shooter game in which Bilal casts himself as a suicide bomber who joins Al-Qaeda to kill President George Bush after learning his own brother has died—intended as a commentary on how the US invasion of Iraq created a power vacuum that allowed radical Islamist groups to recruit young, vulnerable people.
Wafaa Bilal (b. 1966, Najaf, Iraq), Virtual Jihadi (still), 2008. © Wafaa Bilal. Courtesy of the artist
Wafaa Bilal (b. 1966, Najaf, Iraq), Virtual Jihadi (still), 2008. © Wafaa Bilal. Courtesy of the artist
Much attention was paid to how visitors will experience these works mounted previously. “With an artist known for performance work, I wanted to create an exhibition that was not only showing archival images of something that's already happened. This is a mid-career survey. This artist will do so much more,” Kattan said.
As part of the exhibition, Bilal’s newest work will be truly out of this world. When Saddam Hussein was in power, his followers in the Ba’ath Party wanted to pay tribute to their leader by launching a bust of Hussein in space, geo-located above Iraq. Bilal has now partnered with scientists to make this a reality, but the catch is that the bust will be one-inch tall and, when launched into lunar orbit, will “eventually, literally crash and burn in earth’s atmosphere.”
Wafaa Bilal (b. 1966, Najaf, Iraq; lives in New York, NY), Rendering of Thumbsat Model, 2024. © Wafaa Bilal, courtesy of the artist. Photo: Omar ElGamal.
Wafaa Bilal (b. 1966, Najaf, Iraq; lives in New York, NY), Rendering of Thumbsat Model, 2024. © Wafaa Bilal, courtesy of the artist. Photo: Omar ElGamal.
The launch of the bust will have to accompany an existing trip to space, so the date is still unconfirmed. “It’s basically ready to go, and he’s waiting for the right opportunity,” said Kattan. “It’s been a couple years talking to these people. It’s literally rocket science.” ■
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