105,000 Tattoos: Iraqi Artist Wafaa Bilal

105,000 Tattoos: Iraqi Artist Wafaa Bilal

105,000 Tattoos: Iraqi Artist Wafaa Bilal Turns His Own Body into a Canvas to Commemorate Dead Iraqis & Americans

The official death toll from the war is 100,000, but it is widely estimated to be much higher, perhaps even as high as one million. In his latest piece of artwork, Iraqi American artist Wafaa Bilal tries to grapple with the enormity of these numbers. It's a twenty-four-hour live tattooing performance called "..and Counting" that began at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts gallery in New York Monday night. By tonight Bilal's back will be tattooed with the names of Iraqi cities, 5,000 red dots representing dead American soldiers and 100,000 dots in invisible ink representing the official death toll for Iraqis. The dots representing the Iraqi death toll will only be visible under ultraviolet light. Ref. Source 9