Wafaa Bilal has been named the recipient of the 2025 ARTnews Award for Established Artist, recognizing his survey exhibition “Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me” at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (February 1–October 19, 2025). The show is the first major retrospective for the Iraqi American artist, featuring works that put his body at risk, including the iconic performance *Domestic Tension* (2007), in which remote participants fired a paintball gun at him over the internet, and *Virtual Jihadi* (2008), a modified video game that blurs the lines between aggressor and victim. Curated by Bana Kattan, the exhibition restages elements of Bilal’s original performance and presents his ongoing critique of U.S. involvement in the Middle East, particularly the Iraq War and the use of drone warfare.
The award matters because it highlights an artist who has consistently used his own physical and emotional vulnerability to confront the distance between conflict zones and comfort zones, forcing audiences to reckon with their complicity in global violence. Bilal’s work, informed by the 2004 killing of his brother by a drone, remains urgently relevant amid ongoing wars and remote warfare. The ARTnews Awards also recognize four other nominees—Rosa Barba, Raven Chacon, Andrea Chung, and Stephanie Comilang—underscoring the breadth of innovative contemporary practice in 2025.