This work, titled Chair from The Ashes Series, is not simply a documentary photograph of the inside of a partially destroyed house with an ash-covered armchair. Instead, Iraqi-born artist Wafaa Bilal carefully constructed a small-scale model of the inside
of Saddam Hussein’s home after he was captured in 2003.(1) For The Ashes Series, Bilal utilizes journal- istic photographs as sources for small-scale replicas, which the artist creates with cardboard, wood panels, Styrofoam, paint, plaster and miniature objects, and then covers in twenty-one grams of human ash.(2) Printed as a large photograph, the image of the destroyed room reveals the results of past conflict as the chair sits amongst rubble and ash with a section of the wall blown away. For some viewers, the context for where the room is, what conflict has passed, and the significance of the chair, may be unknown or ambiguous. The chair takes the place of a human presence within the photograph, as there is no figure pictured, and represents the fates of the bodies affected by Hussein and by larger conflicts.(3) The making of this series has personal significance to the artist as his brother was killed in Iraq, an event which led to the death of his father. Bilal explains, “The models serve as mirrors of my desire to return home or to find my home when this is not possible, and in a sense to rebuild the places where my brother and father were killed.” This theme of loss is present throughout the entirety of The Ashes Series, as none of the photographs depict bodies amongst their rubble.(4)

Bilal introduces a paradox between the false reality of the constructed set and the perceived veracity of the discipline of photography. The artist also challenges the viewer’s recognition of scale by altering it in two ways. The artist first creates a model that is much smaller than the actual room and then enlarges the finished photograph to separate it from journalistic images. As a result, the haunting photographs in The Ashes Series envelope the viewer, making one feel as if he or she could step inside the eerie scene. This experience is critical to Bilal: “I’m here to shed light on the destruction and violence of warfare in a language that I hope people who have never experienced it can understand. I’m here to create dialogue and build bridges—human being to human being.”(5) Many works in this exhibition call upon the contrast between particular artistic and political perspectives and the realities of war. The photograph, and the entire The Ashes Series, reveals that omission is as powerful as inclusion in the depiction of conflict. The exclusion of bodies in this scene heightens the sense of loss and longing. This concern with omission and the origins of the photograph can also be understood in relation to the larger oversights of American news coverage on the war in Iraq; Bilal brings renewed attention to the number of Iraqi men and women that have died and suffered over years of conflict. 

1 For more information about the artist, see Wafaa Bilal and Kari Lydersen, Shoot an Iraqi: Art, Life and Resistance Under the Gun (San Francisco CA: City Lights Books, 2008). This book details Bilal’s project Shoot an Iraqi and provides background information about the artist’s life and childhood in Iraq. See also Wafaa Bilal and Shelley Rice, Wafaa Bilal: The Ashes Series (New York: Driscoll Babcock Galleries, 2014); and Wafaa Bilal, The Human Condition Catalog (Crudeoils, 2005).

2 For Bilal’s own description and philosophy of The Ashes Series, see http://wafaabilal.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/The-Ashes-Series.pdf.

3 Shelley Rice states, “Devoid of people, the pictures are nevertheless filled with human presence, and the 21 grams of human ashes into which we, body and soul, will one day be transformed.” See Bilal and Rice.

4 Artist and curator Susanne Slavick writes, “Twenty-one grams of human ashes are sifted with organic cinders, photographed, blown up and printed in large format, rendering scale ambiguous and disorienting. Dr. Duncan MacDougall ... determined that, at death, the body lost twenty-one grams of weight with the soul’s departure.” Susanne Slavick, Out of Rubble (New York City: Charta Books Ltd., 2011), 34.

5 Bilal and Lydersen, 5.