- Artist or Maker
- Wafaa Bilal
Iraq, born 1966, active United States - Title
- Market
- Date Made
- 2003-2013
- Medium
- Archival inkjet
- Dimensions
- Image: 41 × 50 in. (104.14 × 127 cm)
Sheet: 44 1/4 × 57 in. (112.4 × 144.78 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.2013.185
- Collecting Area
- Art of the Middle East: Contemporary
- Curatorial Notes
This disturbing image shows a covered market in which sunlight filtering through the damaged roof reveals rather than dispels the eerie, dust-covered devastation of war. Devoid of human life, this tableau conveys a stillness that amplifies the feeling of annihilation. Still more unsettling is the realization that the market is actually a small-scale model magnified dramatically by the photograph. The scene is a handmade miniature reconstruction of one of the many media images documenting the destruction caused during the decadelong war in Iraq (2003–13).
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 also through the deaths of his father and brother.
