Talk | Wafaa Bilal and Bana Kattan

About the Speakers

Iraqi-born artist Wafaa Bilal is known internationally for his online, performative, and interactive works provoking dialogue about international and interpersonal politics. Bilal’s work explores tensions between the cultural spaces he occupies—his home in the comfort zone of the United States and his consciousness in the “conflict zone” in Iraq. In 2008, the Chicago Tribune named him Artist of the Year. That same year, City Lights published Shoot an Iraqi: Art, Life and Resistance Under the Gun, a book about Bilal’s life and Domestic Tension. His artwork is featured in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, Illinois; and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar; among others. He holds a BFA from the University of New Mexico, an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and was conferred an honorary doctorate from DePauw University. Bilal is currently an Arts Professor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.
 

Bana Kattan, Pamela Alper Associate Curator, MCA Chicago, is a researcher and curator with experience working in the Arab world and the United States. Prior to her time at the MCA, she was the Curator at the New York University Abu Dhabi Art Gallery and researcher for Arab Art Historian Salwa Mikdadi. She received her MA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011 and is a recipient of the Barjeel Global Fellowship (2018–19) and a CAA-Getty International Program Grant (2015).