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By tonight Bilal’s back will be tat­tooed with the names of Iraqi cities, 5,000 red dots rep­re­sent­ing dead American sol­diers and 100,000 dots in invis­i­ble ink rep­re­sent­ing the offi­cial death toll for Iraqis. The dots rep­re­sent­ing the Iraqi death toll will only be vis­i­ble under ultra­vi­o­let light.

from an inter­view with Wafaa Bilal

And Counting is a new project I’m doing, which is using a tat­too as a medium and play­ing with the idea of visible-invisible issue. You have 5,000 American deaths in Iraq, and you have 100,000 Iraqi deaths, as the con­se­quences of this war. And what I’m try­ing to do, I’m try­ing to cre­ate some­thing as an engage­ment. I’m try­ing to cre­ate a plat­form, a vir­tual and phys­i­cal plat­form, one peo­ple could come and even just, as a start, acknowl­edge the num­ber. The num­ber is just staggering.

And when I was invited by the Elizabeth Foundation of the Arts to talk about the Iraq issues and the death, I didn’t know—or I didn’t want to cre­ate another phys­i­cal mon­u­ment that’s going to be aban­doned after a few years or few months, few days maybe. And how do you remem­ber human being that’s been killed by an aggres­sion? And what I wanted to do, I wanted to cre­ate that mon­u­ment, when I could carry it with me.

And what I’m doing is, the entire prod­uct is three stages. Stage one, I lay down the Iraqi cities, Iraqi map with no bor­der. Then I am putting 100,000 dots, one dot for each Iraqi, in an invis­i­ble ink. It’s not going to be vis­i­ble unless you have a UV light. And stage three is the 5,000 American deaths going to be on top of the 100,000. So, at the first glance, on my back, you are going to see the Iraqi cities in Arabic and the 5,000 dots that rep­re­sent American death. And there are dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances when you have a UV light. You are going to see the 100,000 dots come to life. And that is exam­in­ing the issue of Iraqi death is not being vis­i­ble, is not being acknowl­edged. And the num­ber, it’s so high we can­not even comprehend.

With that project, a place and a dot, for each dot, we are—people donat­ing one dol­lar for Rally for Iraq orga­ni­za­tion to raise a schol­ar­ship money for Iraqi chil­dren who lost their par­ents dur­ing this war. And this is just an objec­tive of leav­ing some­thing tan­gi­ble, not just the art piece on my back, but also some­thing that’s prac­ti­cal, some­thing that gives hope to the Iraqi gen­er­a­tion under this war.

live stream:
Live Video stream­ing by Ustream

inter­view with Amy Goodman

related links
wikipedia : Wafaa Bilal
Chicago Artist Resource
Artists site