Distant Images, Local Positions

Distant Images,

The production and distribution of images are useful tools for how one might establish control over geography. This ability to reduce what is seen to a two-dimensional miniature bestows a narrative authority to the producer over the recorded subject. Using technological imagery as their point of departure, the artists here propose unstable positions that question and subvert the photographic construction of visual power.

Understandings of geography from afar are constructed in a fragmented way through the distribution and consumption of photographic imagery. This gives the impression of closeness to the subject, but the illusion alienates both the place being seen and the viewer. A sense of false closeness is bestowed upon the consumer who becomes complacent in the uni- verse of appearances, comforted by the knowledge that what depicted is now known. A desert mirage is the precise result of the cameras trigger, which sets in motion the distribution of place. Both the technology and the resulting images are mobile – carried around, shot and sent out through various medias so that the represented geographies are totally unstable, even in our culture’s desperation to fix them to paper, screens and the like.

In Has the World Already Been Made? (2012) Ahmed and Baird act as archaeological conservators and use sculptural means to produce molds (negatives) that result in a fragmented installation of casts (positives) to bring together geographically disparate locations in one space. Many of the resulting forms are recognizable, some not, but all carry with them a mark of familiarity that is difficult to shake free. Elahi’s video installation Concordance (2014), which he produced for this exhibition, examines how the genre of Local Positions 2 3 Odin’s Ravens landscape has evolved in a post-9/11 world where the subject is unsure whether or not they are the watched or the watcher. The Norse god Odin was known as a shamanistic god of Erickson’s Slow Light series (2013–present) addresses the war and guide of souls. He was blinded in one eye, because phenomenon of afterimages by using cameras equipped with he had sacrificed it in exchange for a sip from the well of handmade artificial retinas. These images focus on the oilrefin - Local Positions wisdom. In order to acquire further knowledge, he sent his eries of Louisiana, transforming ubiquitous yet forbidden land- ravens Hugin (symbolizing thought) and Munin (symbol- marks into ghostly, mysterious constellations of light. For the izing memory) to fly across the world and report back with installation Proposed Vortex (2013) Mamou uses photographic news of what they had seen and heard. Artists, like Odin’s practices to explore the visual appropriation of metaphysical ravens, observe the world and report back with their findings. space by those that would use it to fulfill their own spiritual The twenty-first century image technologies have produced a desires. In After Candide (2008–11) Mattingly photographs condition of perpetual seeing and being seen. The Internet, tourist activities then digitally combines them with collected geolocation, mobile communication, and tracking technolo- images of disaster sites masquerading as industrial landscapes. gies, as well as rapidly developing drone and satellite imaging Southworth is another story, so to speak. In recent sculptural technologies, have introduced new forms of perception that works on boredom entitled The Future Starts Slow (2009– represent a paradigm shift in thinking about the lens, image, Present) various magazines are wadded, mashed and often spat and the landscape. at walls and ceilings. In The Deep Empty (2014), an installation produced for this show, he brings together many places by Many of us are participating in the phenomenon of surveil- using his body as material to transform pages from the popular lance by sharing intimate details of our lives on social-media magazine National Geographic into a grotto-like installa- sites. We are becoming ever-visible subjects. Depending on tion. Paglen’s ongoing Untitled (Drones) series uses the fact of our actions, where we live, and which technologies we choose machinic vision by airborne military surveillance technologies to use, we may now exist in a state of continuous surveillance. as his subject. There is power play in this—by staring at these Whether visual, audio or digital, mass surveillance tools are “seeing-machines” against the stillness of color fields, one rec- aggressively monitoring our everyday actions. It ranges from ognizes the 21st century aesthetic condition of perpetual seeing cellphone records being made available to the US government, and being-seen. For the ongoing project Landscape Acquisition email flows scanned for key words, purchases made at grocery (2012–present), Wiener uses the history of military surveillance stores recorded via loyalty card programs. as his point of departure to appropriate, manipulate and photograph environments specific to that past combined with RC The increasingly invasive nature of surveillance practices has drone technology used to survey a picturesque landscape. triggered debates on civil rights and an individual’s right to privacy. Yet most people voluntarily participate in the various Through various sculptural and photographic methods of tracking programs and don’t limit their Internet or cellphone intervention, the works here deal with the indexical prob- use even though they are aware of their information getting lem of photographic representation in relation to geography. recorded. Every financial transaction, every website visited, Traditional image systems of understanding place are ques- email opened and/or ad clicked is documented, stored on tioned and subverted by each artist as revisions that challenge databases for an indefinite future purpose, contemporary conditions of perception and reception. It is this indeterminate goal that creates friction and captures — Wafaa Bilal the attention of contemporary artists. Artists investigate the twenty-first-century world of technologically mediated appearances and are uniquely positioned to reveal the experience of living in an electronic panopticon.* In the process of providing Distant Images, Images, Distant aesthetic resistance to a looming power structure of image cap- 4 5 watched, are we adjusting our behavior? Have we become turing, both subtle or overt, artists make the invisible visible. (more) self-conscious beings, and if so, how does that affect us? How do we, as recorded subjects, behave in and respond Although it may seem that the electronic surveillance systems to a culture of surveillance? What are our modes of engage- are a new condition, it is an amplified version of preexisting ment? Contemporary artistic production is one site where Local Positions states of surveillance and information-gathering using new the engagement with, the embracing of, and resistance to the technologies. The condition of perpetual seeing and being seen apparatus of the ever-seeing panopticon are made visible. existed long before the digital age. It is in many ways an integral part of human culture. Greek Gods were all-seeing and all- Artistic images have the power to reveal or conceal. Artists knowing and royal families and political empires have employed respond to this increased notion of self-consciousness and elaborate spy networks throughout history. Today we have uncertainty of being watched by partaking in the watching. “Neighborhood Watch Groups” that theoretically look out for They are returning the gaze, so to speak, and aim to instigate each other for good, bad, or simply out of nosiness. a reversal of power. Others adopt or simulate surveillance technologies similar to those employed by the US government The sensation of being watched is not new; what is different is as a way to appropriate the watcher’s gaze. Rather than pres- who is watching, how, where, and how many are being watched ent a confrontational looking back, or return of the gaze, they at one time. The methods of documentation, visual, acoustic, or employ new image technologies as a rich territory for aesthetic otherwise, the overwhelming quantity and the storage needed to explorations. The act of image-making functions as a site of preserve all this data has expanded exponentially. For example, interference, a place for questioning, or as a mode of revealing Google Earth is documenting most of the globe and is gathering current conditions of power and perception. more and more images daily. It has contributed to the transfor- mation of existing notions of photographic representation in Perhaps the role of the artist is to be like Odin’s ravens, relation to geography. Google Maps conveniently provides street reporting back to society at large what they’ve seen and heard views of places we intend to visit or are curious about, but it also throughout the globe. However, unlike the mechanical vision allows us to zoom in to our own backyard. Not only are we being of so many contemporary “seeing machines,” such as cam- watched, we are also able to watch ourselves and are aware of our eras, satellites, and computerized tracking systems, artists visibility. Our understanding of place is transformed as a result. serve as both observer and reporter to simultaneously interpret and capture this complex cultural moment. Surveillance cameras once used to protect businesses or homes of the wealthy are no longer limited to protecting private prop- —Leonie Bradbury erty, but now have expanded their reach into the public domain. For example, London’s pervasive public-camera system, known as the “ring of steel,” is a network of over half-a-million cameras connected to powerful mega-computer databases, many equipped with facial-recognition programs that monitor and process gigabytes of visual data every day. The July 2005 (7/7) suicide bombers, who detonated bombs aboard the London * A panopticon is an institutional building designed by the English Underground and a bus killing 52 people, were all captured on philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the late 18th cen- CCTV cameras. tury. The concept of the design is to allow a single watchman to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) inmates of an institution without them being able to tell whether they are being watched or not. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ These new modes of technological imagery have resulted in a Panopticon. For a detailed, critical understanding of the concept of pan- drastic shift in our relationship to the reproductive image and opticon I suggest reading French Theorist Michel Foucault’s Discipline our sense of self in the landscape. Once we are aware of being and Punish, 1975. Distant Images, Images, Distant Haseeb Ahmed and For EFA Project Space the 6 7 Recent exhibitions include This New Ocean the media and has been covered by The New Daniel Baird artists will produce HWBM x 5: at Appendix Project Space, Portland; York Times, Forbes, Wired, CNN, and has Merge Visible at Prairie Productions, appeared on Al Jazeera, Fox News, and on Under the cover of darkness or mas- Bridge. Here in the gallery the artists Chicago; Downcast Eyes at the Museum of The Colbert Report. Elahi is also Director of querading as conservators in broad “meet in the middle” with two pylon- Contemporary Art, Chicago. Digital Cultures and Creativity in the Honors daylight, the artists travel the world like structures, each arriving from College at the University of Maryland, and Local Positions making molds of architectural and Brussels and Chicago. By making this lives roughly equidistant from the CIA, FBI, natural formations. The resulting process transparent, dominant logisti- and NSA headquarters. cal networks are thrown into relief to casts are used to construct ‘universal- Hasan Elahi ized spaces.’ Mold-making bears a reshape our experience of the built In the multichannel video installation direct relationship to photography. A environment. Concordance (2014), Elahi exam- mold is a 1:1 reproduction of a thing AnnieLaurie Erickson ines how the genre of landscape has or a fragment of a place. While pho- The project Slow Light (2013–Present) evolved in a post-9/11 world where the tos capture a place at a certain time a addresses the phenomenon of subject is unsure whether or not they mold allows for the reproduction of afterimages—the latent imagery that are the watched or the watcher. In this that place in the present. This work remains on our retinas after we look role-playing back-and-forth, the work addresses sculpture’s dependence on at the sun or bright objects in the dark. demonstrates the intricate relation photographic documentation. By Using handmade artificial retinas between the spectator and the target, choosing molds over photographs we that absorb and release the remains of surveillance and protection, voyeur- ask, If you can’t see the image—has it light, Erickson is able to simulate an ism and exhibitionism, and ultimately, ever existed? If you can see the thing— essentially unphotographable visual the state and the individual—and how can it take you there? Haseeb Ahmed and Daniel Baird, experience. Her afterimage process HWBM x4 (detail), 2013 we cannot but be a part of it. The artists have made renders the oil refineries of Louisiana five subsequent installations since (also “unphotographable” according to local police) into ghostly, mysteri- their first, which they produced in Ahmed (b. 1985–Toledo, OH) is based November of 2011 at the Jan van in Brussels, Belgium. He holds a BFA and ous constellations of light marked Eyck Academie Gallery (Maastricht, BA from the School of the Art Institute by unearthly color shifts. The images the Netherlands). Working half- of Chicago and a Masters of Science in are each a point along a continuum Visual Studies from MIT in 2010. Ahmed a-world away, the artists deploy a Hasan Elahi, Concordance, 2014 between representation and abstrac- often works collaboratively on site-specific “slow-network” by trading and shar- tion, or between our immediate visual installations and discrete objects and bor- reality and the decayed, remembered ing an inventory of collected molds rows methodologies from the hard sciences. and forms. This practice is remarkable Ahmed holds a research position at the Hasan Elahi (b. 1972–Rangpur, Bangladesh) imagery that subconsciously shapes similar to the 1867 Convention For Zurich University of the Arts on the project is an interdisciplinary artist whose work our perception. Promoting Universally Reproductions Size Matters. His recent exhibitions include examines issues of surveillance, citizenship, of Works of Art for the Benefit of Fish Bone Chapel at Naturalis, Leiden (NL) migration, transport, and borders and fron- for the Designers and Artists for Genomics tiers. His work has been presented in numer- Museums of All Countries signed by Award, Hedah Gallery, Maastricht (NL), ous exhibitions at venues such as SITE Santa the nobility of Europe to share the Kobus oder Kuppel IFA Gallery, Berlin and Fe, Centre Georges Pompidou, Sundance mold collection of masterworks and Stuttgart (DE), HWBM x4 at Roots and Film Festival, Kassel Kulturbahnhof, and archeological collections. The scale of Culture Gallery, Chicago (US). at the Venice Biennale. Elahi was recently Has the World Already Been Made? invited to speak about his work at the Tate (2012) is global and covers thousands Baird (b. 1984–Bedminster, NJ) lives and Modern, Einstein Forum, the American works in Chicago, IL. He received his Association of Artificial Intelligence, of miles and thousands of years B.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute the International Association of Privacy through the transmission of architec- of Chicago in 2007 and his M.F.A. from Professionals, World Economic Forum, and AnnieLaurie Erickson, 29°59’23.95”N,

Distant Images, Images, Distant tural and geographic forms. the University of Illinois, Chicago in 2011. at TED Global. His work is frequently in 90°25’19.16”W (Norco), 2013 Erickson’s (b. 1981–Lincoln, NE) work 8 9 combining pictures of catastrophic Tokyo, and the deCordova Museum. She addresses the visual world as illusory by sites (nuclear test ranges, earthquakes, recently participated in MoMA PS1’s “Expo using optical complication to reinterpret the fires, floods, etc.) and people viewing 1” with Triple Canopy Magazine. Her work nature of human vision. She is currently an has been featured in Aperture Magazine, Art Assistant Professor of Art and the Director and photographing as they would in America, Artforum, ArtNews, Sculpture of Photography in the Newcomb Art normally do. This imposition of the Magazine, The New York Times, Financial Local Positions Department at Tulane University. Erickson tourists desire to commemorate their Times, Le Monde Magazine, The New earned her BFA in photography from the experience is followed by the will Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and on BBC Rhode Island School of Design, her MFA to preserve what did not happen to News, MSNBC, Fox News, News 12, NPR, in photography from the School of the them, thereby controlling not only the WNBC, New York 1, and Art21. Her writings Art Institute of Chicago and completed were included in Nature, edited by Jeffrey additional studies at the Ludwig Foundation Regina Mamou, Proposed Vortex, 2013 image (and its subsequent distribu- Kastner in the Whitechapel Documents of in Cuba and SPEOS Photographic Institute tion) but also preserving and exempli- Contemporary Art series. in Paris. Her work has been shown nationally fying a distanced subject position. and internationally including at the Boston Regina Mamou (b. 1983–Southfield, MI) is Center for the Arts, and CentrePasquArt, a Chicago-based visual artist who engages Bienne, Switzerland. Erickson was on faculty in a researcher’s process that is tied to Trevor Paglen at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago the search for the aesthetics of place and from 2007–2010, where she developed a unconventional aspects of locations that are In the Untitled (Drones) series, Paglen special topics course on the intersections predominately psychological in nature. In uses the machinic vision inherent to of art and science in lens-based media. She 2009 she received a fifteen-month Fulbright airborne military surveillance technol- has presented her artwork and teaching at fellowship to Jordan to explore naviga- both the College Art Association national ogies as his subject. By photograph- tional methods and memory in Amman. ing them against picturesque skies conference and the Society for Photographic Mary Mattingly, Off Worlds, 2010 She has exhibited her work nationally and he inverts the gaze of these machines Education national conference. She lives and internationally. Selected exhibitions include works in New Orleans, Louisiana. Makan Art Space in Amman, Jordan (2010); back onto them while making refer- Action Field Kodra’s 11th Exhibition of ence to Abstract Expressionism. Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki, Greece Mary Mattingly’s (b. 1978–Rockville, CT) There is power play in this—by staring (2011); and The Chicago Project online at work collapses boundaries between per- at these “seeing-machines” against Catherine Edelman Gallery (2012). Most formance, sculpture, architecture, and the stillness of color fields, one recog- Regina Mamou photography. Through wearable environ- recently, her solo exhibition Unfortunately, nizes the twenty-first century In the installation Proposed Vortex It Was Paradise (2013) at the Historic Water ments and autonomous living systems, she (2013), Mamou visits the grounds of Tower Gallery in Chicago, Illinois, was addresses migration due to current and aesthetic condition of perpetual a Spiritualist community to explore selected as an Artforum.com’s Critics’ Picks, future environmental and political situations. seeing and being-seen. and investigate the construction of Chicago, in November 2013. Mamou holds Mattingly recently represented smART- metaphysical space. Working at the an MFA from the School of the Art Institute power in the Philippines through the Bronx Museum and the US State Department. intersection of photography, installa- of Chicago and a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. She has received grants from the James L. tion, writing, and research practices, Knight Foundation, the Harpo Foundation, her studies of the occult through NYFA, the Jerome Foundation, and the Art topography and landscape emphasize Matters Foundation. In 2012 she launched an interest in visually experiencing the Flock House Project: three spherical phenomenological architecture (i.e., Mary Mattingly living-systems that were choreographed In the series After Candide (2008–11), through New York City’s five boroughs. energy fields and portals), which are Mattingly also founded the Waterpod rendered on the pictorial surface as Mattingly uses photography and digital technology to build images Project, a barge-based public space contain- perceptions of the astral plane. ing an autonomous habitat. Mattingly’s that reference a human condition work has been exhibited at the International Trevor Paglen, Untitled (Reaper Drone), 2010 that Lucy Lippard calls “disaster Center of Photography, Seoul Art Center,

Distant Images, Images, Distant tourism”. She proceeds by digitally The New York Public Library, the Palais de Trevor Paglen’s (b. 1974–Camp Springs, be physically molded into sculptural Scott Patrick Wiener (October–November 2012), and curated a 10 11 MD) work deliberately blurs lines between stalagmites and stalactites. During In the project Landscape Acquisition project entitled “All Our Tomorrows and science, contemporary art, journalism, and the exhibition Southworth will also (2012–Present) a 2-channel video Yesterdays” at Proof Gallery in Boston other disciplines to construct unfamiliar, (November–December 2013). His work has yet meticulously researched ways to see and present a riveting performance about made with cameras mounted on the been profiled and reviewed inARTnews , The interpret the world around us. His visual boredom and the reshaping of space. top and bottom of a radio-controlled Boston Globe, TimeOut Chicago and Paper Local Positions work has been exhibited at the Metropolitan RQ-1 Reaper drone is combined & Carriage. He has been a guest lecturer and Museum of Art, New York; The Tate with stills images taken during critic at the University of California, San Modern, London; The Walker Arts Center, actual military surveillance missions. Diego, the University of Missouri, Columbia, Minneapolis; The San Francisco Museum When seen together, these works are The Tisch School of the Arts, NYU, Leipzig of Modern Art; the 2008 Taipei Biennial; the Universität, and Massachusetts College of 2009 Istanbul Biennial; the 2012 Liverpool hoisted beyond their original con- Art and Design. He currently lives and works Biennial, and numerous other solo and group texts and work to establish a space in Boston, MA. exhibitions. He is the author of five books between the images intended tactical and numerous articles on subjects including purpose and the history of beauty in experimental geography, state secrecy, mili- western aesthetics. tary symbology, photography, and visuality. His most recent book, The Last Pictures, is Travis LeRoy Southworth, The a meditation on the intersections of deep- Growing Metaphysical Void at the Center time, politics, and art. Paglen has received of My Bedroom Ceiling, 2010 grants and awards from the Smithsonian, Art Matters, Artadia, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the LUMA foundation, the Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology, and Southworth (b. 1979–Honolulu, Hawaii) is the Aperture Foundation. Paglen lives and an artist working in collage, sculpture and works in New York. photography. Recent exhibitions include Trinity Church Museum (NYC), Dock (Basel, Switzerland), The Drawing Center (NYC), Scott Patrick Wiener, Untitled 2 Martha Otero Gallery (Los Angeles), Mixed (Spies in the Sky), 2013 Greens Gallery (solo project, NYC), Thomas Travis LeRoy Robertello Gallery (Chicago), The Bronx Southworth Museum of Art (Bronx), Arthouse at the Jones Center (Austin, TX) and the Center for Wiener (b. 1977–Baltimore, MD) spent his In his current work, Southworth Curatorial Studies at the Hessel Museum of early life traveling from one military base produces "paper stalactites" from Art (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY). He was to another, never spending more than four small bits of cultural detritus, the very awarded a 2010 Fellowship in Photography years in one place at a time. The work he things we use to forestall and speed from the New York Foundation for the Arts. produces is the direct result of an attempt up time. Sourcing his pages from He also has participated in the Artist in the to stabilize time and place with lens-based media. He studied at Massachusetts College advertising, he disorients depictions Marketplace (AIM 29) Program at The Bronx Museum of Art and received a BRIC Media of Art and Design (BFA, 2001), the School of space that devolve into abstrac- Arts Fellowship. His work has been profiled of the Art Institute of Chicago (MFA, tions in order to impose conditions and reviewed in Time Out Chicago, Art Slant, 2007), the Skowhegan School of Painting of non-space back onto the original. WNYC, and L Magazine. Travis holds a and Sculpture (Class of 2010) and a com- For EFA Project Space Southworth MFA from The School of the Art Institute pleted 2009–10 DAAD (German Academic will create The Deep Empty (2014); an of Chicago and a BFA from the University Exchange Service) Scholarship for Fine Arts in Leipzig, Germany. Most recently, he had installation composed of pages from of Arizona. In the beginning of 2013 he spent 6 months on a residency in Switzerland a solo exhibition at the 92Y Weill Gallery National Geographic magazine. The creating new work inspired by visits to the entitled “The Luxury of Distance” (March– photographically rendered land- Large Hadron Collider operated by CERN. May 2012), a group exhibition of the same

Distant Images, Images, Distant scapes that adorn the periodical will Currently he lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. name at Kunstverein Weiden in Germany Works in the Exhibition Mary Mattingly 12 13 Understanding Tourism, 2010 Archival Inkjet Print 20 × 40 in.

Local Positions Haseeb Ahmed & Megaempredimiento, 2010 Daniel Baird Archival Inkjet Print Has the World Already Been 30 × 30 in. Made x5: Bridge, 2014 Plaster, plastic, steel, and wood Off Worlds, 2010 25 × 9 × 2.5 ft. Archival Inkjet Print 20 × 40 in.

Hasan Elahi Concordance, 2014 Trevor Paglen 4 ½ × 11 ft. Untitled (Reaper Drone), 2010 12 channel video installation C-Print 48 × 60 in.

AnnieLaurie Erickson 29°59’23.95”N, 90°25’19.16”W Travis LeRoy Southworth (Norco), 2013 The Deep Empty, 2014 Archival pigment print from Pages from National Geographic color negative taken with after- magazines imaging camera Dimensions variable 44 × 66 in.

29°59’23.45”N, 90°25’19.35”W Scott Patrick Wiener (Norco), 2013 Three Surveys, 2012–13 Archival pigment print from Two 32" LED Monitors color negative taken with after- imaging camera Untitled 1 (Spies in the Sky), 2013 40 × 60 in. Archival Inkjet Print 40 × 60 in.

Regina Mamou Untitled 2 (Spies in the Sky), 2013 Proposed Vortex, 2013 Archival Inkjet Print Digital C-Prints, Black Lights, Chalk 40 × 60 in. Dimensions variable Untitled 3 (Spies in the Sky), 2013 Archival Inkjet Print 40 × 60 in. Distant Images, Images, Distant Wafaa Bilal (b. 1966 –Najaf, Iraq) is an Leonie Bradbury (b. 1973–The Netherlands) Michelle Levy, Director The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts (EFA) 14 Associate Arts Professor at New York is a curator of contemporary art. She holds Lauren Bierly, Assistant Director is a 501 (c) (3) public charity. Through its University’s Tisch School of the Arts and a BA in Art History from the University of Claire Barliant, Curatorial Advisor three core programs, EFA Studios, EFA known internationally for his on-line per- Minnesota and an MA in the History of Project Space and the Robert Blackburn formative and interactive works provoking Art from Boston University specializing in EFA Project Space PrintmakingWorkshop, EFA is dedicated dialogue about international politics and Twentieth Century Theory and Criticism. She

Local Positions A Program of The Elizabeth Foundation to providing artists across all disciplines internal dynamics. For the recent project, is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Aesthetics for the Arts with space, tools and a cooperative forum 3rdi, Bilal had a camera surgically implanted and Art Theory at the Institute for Doctoral 323 West 39th Street, 2nd Floor for the development of individual practice. on the back of his head to spontaneously Studies in the Visual Arts. She has been the New York, NY 10018 www.efanyc.org transmit images to the web 24 hours a day Director and Curator at Montserrat College – a statement on surveillance, the mundane of Art Galleries, an academic art gallery in (212) 563-5855 x 244 and the things we leave behind. Bilal’s 2010 Beverly, MA, since 2005. [email protected] | www.efanyc.org EFA Project Space is supported in work… And Counting similarly used his part by public funds from the NewYork own body as a medium. His back was tat- EFA Project Space, a program of the City Department of Cultural Affairs in tooed with a map of Iraq and dots represent- Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, is a Partnership with the City Council. Private ing Iraqi and US casualties – the Iraqis in collaborative cross-disciplinary arts venue funding for the program has been received invisible ink seen only under a black light. founded on the belief that art is directly fromThe AndyWarhol Foundation for the Bilal’s 2007 installation, Domestic Tension, connected to the individuals who produce Visual Arts. also addressed the Iraq war. Bilal spent a it, the communities that arise because month in a Chicago gallery with a paintball of it, and to everyday life, and that by gun that people could shoot at him over the providing an arena for exploring these Internet. The Chicago Tribune called it “one connections, we empower artists to forge of the sharpest works of political art to be new partnerships and encourage the seen in a long time” and named him 2008 expansion of ideas. Artist of the Year. 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 “con- flict 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 gradu- ated 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. He is the founder and co-director of the crudeoils.us, an exhibition webspace for artists and writers and has curated exhibitions for Dean Jenson Gallery (Milwaukee, WI), Schneider Gallery (Chicago, IL), and the University of New Mexico Art Museum. This is his first curatorial work for EFA Project Space.

Haseeb Ahmed and Daniel Baird Hasan Elahi AnnieLaurie Erickson Regina Mamou Mary Mattingly Trevor Paglen Travis LeRoy Southworth Scott Patrick Wiener

Curated by Wafaa Bilal Essay by Leonie Bradbury efa project space

January 24th – March 8th, 2014