Chair from the series Ashes

* Nearly 20,000 images of artworks the museum believes to be in the public domain are available to download on this site. Other images may be protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights. By using any of these images you agree to LACMA's Terms of Use.

Chair from the series Ashes

Series: The Ashes Series
Edition: 1/5
Iraq, 2003-2013
Photographs
Inkjet print (pigment based)
Image: 41 × 50 in. (104.14 × 127 cm) Frame: 42 1/2 × 51 1/2 × 2 in. (107.95 × 130.81 × 5.08 cm)
Purchased with funds provided by Art of the Middle East: CONTEMPORARY (M.2013.117)
Not currently on public view

Curator Notes

This picture of abject annihilation portrays the horror of war through an absence of human life and an

...

This picture of abject annihilation portrays the horror of war through an absence of human life and an eerie, dust-covered setting. Still more unsettling is the realization that the room with its throne-like chair is actually a doll-sized model magnified dramatically by the photograph. The scene is a handmade reconstruction of one of the many media images that document the destruction caused by the decade-long war in Iraq.

Wafaa Bilal, an associate arts professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, fled Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1991. He is known internationally for his provocative performance pieces and interactive works. In the series Ashes, to which this photograph belongs, the ashes covering the models include human remains. The powerful photographs capture and reflect Bilal’s own reactions to the war as an exiled Iraqi who experienced the devastation of his home not merely through media imagery but through the deaths of his father and brother.

More...

Bibliography