Wafaa Bilal

Wafaa Bilal was born in Iraq in 1966.
Although the political regime prevented him from studing Art - he continued to practice his Art while studying Geography at University. Imprisoned and tortured for his political Art work against Saddam Hussein, he escaped from Iraq and spent two years in a Horror refugee camp before arriving in America in 1992.
Since then he has learnt English and studie Art and won many awards- he now teaches at the Chicago Institute of Art.

He has been unable to vist his family in Iraq for many years and they are now living in the horror of the present Iraq- American conflict, with Wafaa's younger brother being killed recently.

Wafaa continues to make Art works that protest against the oppression of the human spirit and his recent Domestic Tension Art work - where he was in a room for two weeks and people all around the world could shoot actual physical paintballs at him by clicking on their computers
was an example of this.

Again I obtained this information from FAQ on the Wikipaedia site from Dr Su Ballard , however I also had a look at http://crudeoils.us// which was a link from that page and it showed a lot more of Wafaa's work and interviews with him.

I had lots of fun learning how to edit my posts and add things in this time.

Personally I was horrified by the fact that ANYONE would click on their computers and shoot anything at a defenceless chap in a room but it certainly does highten awareness of what it's like living in a war torn country. A very brave work - I felt.

Below is a video of Domestic Tension, or The Paintball project obtained from YouTube.