Witness the innovative, exploratory, and provocative work of internationally renowned artist Wafaa Bilal in his first major museum survey.

Opening on February 1 and running through October 19, 2025, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, “Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me” is the first major survey of renowned artist Wafaa Bilal (b. 1966, Najaf, Iraq; lives in New York, NY). The exhibition covers five major works from Bilal’s immersive, interdisciplinary practice, which investigates the complex dynamic between international and interpersonal politics, with a particular focus on US-Iraq relations. Whether putting his own body on the line to interrogate notions of power or inventing new technological methods to rectify acts of cultural destruction, Bilal shows us what it means to consciously engage across cultures while highlighting the negative global implications of consumption, exploitation, and profiteering.

Among the exhibition’s featured artworks is a reconstruction of a room in Chicago’s FlatFile Gallery, which the artist confined himself to for the month-long performance Domestic Tension (2007). During this performance, Bilal invited the audience to shoot at him with a paintball gun operated virtually by viewers online, who could also interact with him via camera feed and live chat. Over the course of 31 days, around 65,000 shots were fired by shooters from 136 countries.

Also included is a large-scale, towering projection installation displaying images from Bilal’s year-long performance 3rdi (2010–11), wherein Bilal surgically implanted a camera into the back of his head that, every minute on the minute, captured a photograph of whatever was behind him. The images included in the MCA display will correspond to the minute, hour, and day they were taken. Nearby in the galleries is Bilal’s 2008 video game Virtual Jihadi, installed at playable computer stations that are themselves housed in a large installation designed to look like an early 2000s internet café. As visitors play the game, they are confronted by ideas such as the use of technology to sanitize war, the popularization of video games as military recruiting tools, and the comfortable distance that modern-day weaponry creates from the reality of harm.

The exhibition also features Bilal’s In a Grain of Wheat project—his response to ISIS’s destruction of the Winged Bull of Nineveh sculpture, or lamassu, in 2015. The piece involves inserting a high-resolution 3D scan of the sculpture into the DNA of a strain of wheat. A commission by the MCA will see the project activated in a new sculptural form, furthering the artist’s aim of transforming terrorist violence into restorative agency.

Additionally, as part of the exhibition, one edition of Bilal’s Thumbsat Model (2024), which comprises a one-inch golden bust of Saddam Hussein fixed to a small satellite, will be launched into Earth’s orbit; another edition will be displayed in the gallery. Developed as a critique of the former Iraqi president’s rumored desire to launch a bust of himself into space, the work also features a number of in-gallery components, including a way for visitors to track the artwork’s location in orbit through live-captured images before it is destroyed upon re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.

The MCA is planning a full suite of programs to commemorate Bilal’s first major survey, including a talk between the artist and exhibition curator Bana Kattan at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, an exclusive MCA member tour, and the sale of lollipops in the shape of Saddam Hussein, reinforcing the theme of consumption, which surfaces in Bilal’s practice time and time again.

“Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me” is curated by Bana Kattan, former Pamela Alper Associate Curator, with Iris Colburn, Curatorial Associate. It is accompanied by a major publication, the first to survey multiple projects by the visionary artist.