105,000 tattoos …and Counting
On March 8, critically-acclaimed Iraqi artist and Wafaa Bilal will make a statement as he transforms his body into a permanent canvas honoring the documented casualties of the Iraqi war. Over a 24-hour period, his back will be tattooed with 5,000 red dots, representing the American death toll, and 100,000 green UV dots–visible under blacklight only–signifying the underreported and largely unnoticed deaths of Iraqis. As average citizens annotate the performance by reading aloud the names of the fallen, Bilal will be asking for donations to be made to Rally for Iraq Scholars, which provides financial support to those who have lost parents in the Iraq war.
Tattooing One Dot for Every Casualty during Operation Iraqi Freedom > (via Infosthetics.com)Another one of Bilal's performances, entitled "Domestic Tension," consisted of him living in a Chicago museum for 30-days in a one-room cell. During this installation, visitors of the gallery and/or the project's website could shoot yellow paintballs at him 24-hours a day; eventually hackers were able to program guns to shoot automatically, without warning. Reportedly, Bilal was shot over 60,000 times from people in over 130 countries during the month. This chilling exhibition drew attention to what it's like to live under constant stress and fear of attack, and won Wafaa the Chicago Tribune's "Artist of the Year" award for 2007.
