Wafaa Bilal
…and counting
2010
24 hour performance, tattoo

Wafaa Bilal’s brother Haji was killed by a missile at a checkpoint in their hometown of Kufa, Iraq in 2004. Bilal feels the pain of both the American and Iraqi losses of this war. However the piece explores how the deaths of Iraqis like his brother are largely invisible through the American media presentation of the war. 

…and Counting addressed this double standard as Bilal turned his own body – in an endurance based performance into a canvas memorial. Above we see his back with a borderless map of Iraq, with one dot for each Iraqi and American casualty near the city where they fell. 100,000 deaths are commemorated with green UV ink (only visible under black light- here seen before healing) in order to explore this invisibility in comparison to American soldiers. During the performance the names of the dead were read.