Iraqi-born artist Wafaa Bilal, the artist behind Meme Junkyard which can be seen at this year’s AND Festival, is known internationally for his online performative and interactive works which provoke dialogue about international politics and internal dynamics.
For AND Festival, he joins us to talk about his previous works and practice which include 3rdi, when he had a camera surgically implanted on the back of his head to spontaneously transmit images to the web 24 hours a day – a statement on surveillance, the mundane and the things we leave behind.
Bilal’s work is constantly informed by the experience of fleeing his homeland and existing simultaneously in two worlds – his home in the “comfort zone” of the U.S. and his consciousness of the “conflict zone” in Iraq.
Bilal suffered repression under Saddam Hussein’s regime and fled Iraq in 1991 during the first Gulf War. After two years in refugee camps in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, he came to the U.S. where he graduated from the University of New Mexico and then obtained an MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
In 2008, City Lights published Shoot an Iraqi: Art, Life and Resistance Under the Gun about Bilal’s life and the Domestic Tension project.