Bilal Ouafa. Ashes photo series
Bilal Ouafa is an American artist of Iraqi origin, a former professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, currently an assistant professor at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. He is the author of a number of extraordinary performances.
The Ashes series depicts the suffering of war not through human expressions of emotion, but through the absence of life in destroyed homes. In the artist’s own words, these images serve as mirrors of his own desire to return home to Iraq when that is not possible, and provide an opportunity to explore the duality of his life as a former Iraqi refugee and as an Arab American between two conflicting worlds.