Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me @ MCA Chicago - Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me 

MCA Chicago 

Through October 19, 2025

Installation view, Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me, 

MCA Chicago, February 1–October 19, 2025.

Photo: @bob.mov (Robert Chase Heishman)

Installation view, Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me, 

MCA Chicago, February 1–October 19, 2025.

Photo: @bob.mov (Robert Chase Heishman)

Installation view, Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me, 

MCA Chicago, February 1–October 19, 2025.

Photo: @bob.mov (Robert Chase Heishman)

Installation view, Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me, 

MCA Chicago, February 1–October 19, 2025.

Photo: @bob.mov (Robert Chase Heishman)

Installation view, Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me, 

MCA Chicago, February 1–October 19, 2025.

Photo: @bob.mov (Robert Chase Heishman)

Installation view, Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me, 

MCA Chicago, February 1–October 19, 2025.

Photo: @bob.mov (Robert Chase Heishman)

The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago presents the exhibition Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me. This is a major survey of renowned artist WAFAA BILAL (b. 1966, Najaf, Iraq; lives in New York, NY). Crucially, the exhibition takes a comprehensive look at Bilal’s myriad practice, highlighting the development of his work across decades and placing it in conversation with broader art histories. It also explores cultural cannibalism—that is, how culture (specifically the culture of the other) is used, disassembled, and consumed.

Working in performance, sculpture, and with online and interactive technologies, Bilal’s interdisciplinary practice investigates the dynamic between international and interpersonal politics while highlighting the tension between the United States, which he has deemed the “comfort zone,” and the “conflict zone” of Iraq. Through methods such as using his own body to interrogate notions of power and using innovative technologies to rectify acts of cultural destruction, Wafaa Bilal shows us what it means to consciously engage across cultures while highlighting negative global implications of consumption, exploitation, and profiteering.

The exhibition is organized into five immersive sections, each of which focuses on a major work from Bilal’s practice. Artworks on display include a reconstruction of a room in Chicago’s FLATFILE Gallery that the artist confined himself to for a month-long performance in Domestic Tension (2007). During this performance, Wafaa Bilal invited the audience to shoot at him with a paintball gun that was operated virtually by viewers who could also interact with him via camera feed and live chat. Over the course of thirty days, a total of 60,000 shots were fired by "shooters" from 128 countries. 

Installation view, Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me, 

MCA Chicago, February 1–October 19, 2025.

Photo: @bob.mov (Robert Chase Heishman)

Installation view, Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me, 

MCA Chicago, February 1–October 19, 2025.

Photo: @bob.mov (Robert Chase Heishman)

Installation view, Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me, 

MCA Chicago, February 1–October 19, 2025.

Photo: @bob.mov (Robert Chase Heishman)

Installation view, Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me, 

MCA Chicago, February 1–October 19, 2025.

Photo: @bob.mov (Robert Chase Heishman)

Installation view, Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me, 

MCA Chicago, February 1–October 19, 2025.

Photo: @bob.mov (Robert Chase Heishman)

Installation view, Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me, 

MCA Chicago, February 1–October 19, 2025.

Photo: @bob.mov (Robert Chase Heishman)

Also included in the MCA exhibition is a large-scale, towering video displaying images from Bilal’s year-long performance 3rdi (2010–11), wherein Wafaa Bilal surgically implanted a camera into the back of his head that, every minute on the minute, captured photographs. The photos included in the MCA display correspond to the minute, hour, and day they were taken.

Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me also presents Thumbsat Satellite (2024), which comprises a golden bust of Saddam Hussein fixed to a satellite and launched into Earth’s orbit as part of the exhibition. Developed as a critique of the former Iraqi president’s rumored desire to launch a bust of himself into space, the work will also feature a number of in-gallery components, including a model of the satellite and bust and a way for visitors to track the artwork’s location through live-captured images before it is destroyed upon re-entry into the atmosphere.

Additionally, the exhibition features In a Grain of Wheat: Cultivating Hybrid Futures in Ancient Seed DNA, Bilal’s response to ISIS’s destruction of the Winged Bull of Nineveh sculpture, or Lamassu, in 2015. The piece involves inserting high-resolution 3D scans of the sculpture into the DNA of heirloom Iraqi wheat seeds. A commission by the MCA see the project activated in a new, sculptural form, which considers if it is possible for a wheat seed to transform terrorist violence into restorative agency.

The exhibition is accompanied by a major publication, the first to survey multiple projects by the visionary artist.

Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me is curated by Bana Kattan, Pamela Alper Associate Curator, with Iris Colburn, Curatorial Associate.

WAFAA BILAL

Image courtesy of the artist

WAFAA BILAL (b. 1966, Najaf, Iraq; lives in New York, NY) is known internationally for his online performative and interactive works provoking dialogue about international and interpersonal politics. Bilal's work explores tensions between the cultural spaces he occupies—his home in the “comfort zone” of the US and his consciousness in the “conflict zone” in Iraq. For his 2007 installation, Domestic Tension, Wafaa Bilal spent a month in Chicago's FLATFILE Gallery where people could shoot him via a remote-access paintball gun. The Chicago Tribune called it "one of the sharpest works of political art to be seen in a long time"—naming him 2008 Artist of the Year. That same year, City Lights published Shoot an Iraqi: Art, Life and Resistance Under the Gun about Bilal's life and Domestic Tension. His work was part of the Iranian pavilion at the 2015 Venice Biennale.

Wafaa Bilal's work is in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, IL; MATHAF: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha,

MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART CHICAGO - MCA CHICAGO

220 East Chicago Avenue, Chicago, IL

mcachicago.org

Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me, MCA Chicago, February 1 – October 19, 2025

Yoko Ono @ MCA Chicago - Museum of Contemporary Art - "Music of the Mind" - Exhibition Overview + Biography

Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago

October 18, 2025 – February 22, 2026

Yoko Ono

Cut Piece, 1964 

Performance view,

New Works by Yoko Ono, 

Carnegie Recital Hall, New York, NY, March 21, 1965

Photo © Minoru Niizuma

Yoko Ono with Glass Hammer, 1967, 

from Half-A-Wind Show, 

Lisson Gallery, London, UK, 1967.

Artwork © Yoko Ono. Photo © Clay Perry

Yoko Ono

FLY (still), 1970–71

16mm film (color, mono sound)

© Yoko Ono

The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago announced Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind, opening October 2025. The MCA is the exclusive US venue for this comprehensive solo exhibition dedicated to artist, musician, and activist YOKO ONO (b. 1933, Tokyo, Japan; lives in New York, NY). Traveling from Tate Modern in London, where it enjoyed record attendance, and in close collaboration with Ono’s studio, this groundbreaking retrospective covers seventy years of Ono’s trailblazing career, with over 200 works including participatory instruction pieces and scores, installations, a curated music room, films, music and photography, and archival materials. The exhibition reveals Ono’s innovative approach to language, art and participation that continues to speak to the present moment.

Participation is an important feature of Yoko Ono’s vision as an artist, which is why visitors will be able to partake in several interactive, instruction-based artworks throughout Music of the Mind. This exhibition underscores Ono’s legacy of radical performance and her significant and influential contributions to visual art, including Fluxus and Conceptualism; music; film, and activism. The MCA is proud to welcome this timely exhibition, spotlighting Ono’s revelatory art from the last seven decades.

“We are thrilled to present Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind here at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago—a celebration of Ono’s expansive practice which continues to challenge the boundaries of artist and audience,” Pritzker Director Madeleine Grynsztejn said. “This exhibition underscores the avant-garde and interdisciplinary roots that made the MCA what it is today—our first performance in 1967 featured Fluxus artists. We’re overjoyed to bring Ono’s work to the MCA, a museum that so truly aligns with her practice and overlaps with her history.”

Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind documents the artist’s career starting with the mid-1950s, exploring her pivotal role in avant-garde circles in New York, Tokyo, and London, including the development of her ‘instruction pieces’, and the active role she played in the formation of Fluxus, the loose art collective and movement founded in New York in the early 1960s. The exhibition highlights key works from across her decades-long career, including her performance Cut Piece (1964), considered a landmark in performance and feminist art; her collaborations with notable musicians such as John Cage, Ornette Coleman, and her late husband, John Lennon; selected activations of instruction-based art from her influential book Grapefruit (1964); her innovative films of the 1960s and 70s including FLY (1970–71) and her banned Film No.4 (Bottoms) (1966–67) which she created as a ‘petition for peace’; recent works such as her ongoing Wish Tree installation, (1996-present); and public artworks that are emblematic of Ono’s commitment to peace activism.

The exhibition features several participatory artworks, such as Painting to Hammer a Nail (1961/1966), Bag Piece (1964), and White Chess Set (1966), among others. Later works like Add Color (Refugee Boat) (1960/2016) encourage guests to write their hopes and beliefs on a white boat and its surroundings, while the installation My Mommy Is Beautiful (2004) gives the public an opportunity to share thoughts about their relationship to their mothers and motherhood and attach photographs of their mother. Additionally, there will be public activations of Ono’s peace-driven artworks on billboards throughout the city of Chicago and on the MCA’s premises.

“Yoko Ono is a wildly influential and significant figure in performance, conceptualism, music, and activism. She has inspired generations of audiences to think differently about the everyday and seeing art,” said Manilow Senior Curator Jamillah James. “It is an honor to host this wide-ranging exhibition, which is a critical opportunity that invites the public to deeply engage with Ono’s many important contributions to visual art in new and exciting ways."

Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind is organized by Tate Modern, London in collaboration with Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf and Gropius Bau, Berlin and curated by Juliet Bingham, Curator, International Art, Tate Modern with Andrew de Brún, Assistant Curator, International Art, Tate Modern. The MCA presentation is organized (curated) by Jamillah James, Manilow Senior Curator with Korina Hernandez, Curatorial Assistant.

YOKO ONO: ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Yoko Ono is an artist, musician, and activist.

Born in Tokyo, 1933, Ono grew up in Japan, with periods spent abroad in San Francisco and New York. She was the first woman admitted to the philosophy program at Gakushuin University in Tokyo, where she studied before moving to New York in 1953 to attend Sarah Lawrence College.

In 1956, she settled in Manhattan with her then husband, composer Toshi Ichiyanagi. Immersed in a community of artists and composers, Ono began to develop her own art practice, often in the form of instructions that invited the viewer’s participation. In 1960, she rented a loft on Chambers Street in Lower Manhattan and began organizing performances and events in the space with La Monte Young, becoming a vital part of the New York art and music scene.

In 1961, Ono’s first solo exhibition was held at George Maciunas’ AG Gallery in New York. Painting to Be Stepped On, a work of canvas placed on the floor with a card inviting the viewer to step on it, was one of several Instruction Paintings exhibited. Later that year, she gave a performance at Carnegie Recital Hall that included works involving movement, sound, and voice, such as, AOS – To David Tudor, and A Grapefruit in the World of Park.

In March 1962, Ono returned to Tokyo, where she debuted new performances at the Sogetsu Art Center, including The Pulse, and exhibited her Instructions for Paintings, a progression from works shown at AG Gallery. These works, comprised only of written instructions, marked a key moment in the history of conceptual art. Later that year, she performed with John Cage and David Tudor on a concert tour throughout Japan. In 1964, Ono performed Cut Piece and Bag Piece in Kyoto and Tokyo, and self-published Grapefruit, her foundational book of instructions.

In the fall of 1964, Ono returned to New York, continuing to perform and stage events, and pioneering new ways of disseminating her art through advertising and postcard events. She also began making her own films, including Film No. 4, Match and Eyeblink.

In September 1966, Ono was invited to London to perform and lecture in the Destruction in Art Symposium. Remaining in London, she had a solo exhibition at Indica Gallery and Lisson Gallery the following year, showing new conceptual object-based works such as White Chess Set, Apple, and Half-A-Room. During this period, she continued to make films, including a new version of Film No. 4 (Bottoms), and presented a series of performances on her concert tour Music of the Mind.

At her Indica Gallery exhibition, Ono met John Lennon, beginning a personal and artistic relationship in art, music, and activism. By 1969 their conceptual events to promote peace had become world-wide news, including the WAR IS OVER! If you want it campaign, and Bed-In for Peace, held in an Amsterdam hotel room during their honeymoon in 1969 and later in Montreal.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s Ono and Lennon’s activities centered primarily on music, film, and activism. Ono released four solo albums and four collaborative albums with Lennon over just five years, while also making multiple films, including FLY, Freedom, “RAPE”, Apotheosis, and Imagine.

In 1971 Ono had her first retrospective exhibition, This Is Not Here, at the Everson Art Museum. Later that year, her unofficial conceptual exhibition, Museum of Modern [F]art at the Museum of Modern Art was advertised in the Village Voice and documented as a new film.

In 1973, Ono and Lennon announced the birth of a new conceptual country, Nutopia, with “no land, no boundaries, no passports, only people.” In 1975 the birth of their son, Sean Ono Lennon, influenced the couple’s decision to take a break from public life.

In August 1980, Ono and Lennon returned to the studio to record their first album together since 1972. Double Fantasy was released in November and went on to win the 1981 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Less than a month after its release, Lennon was shot and killed by an assassin outside their home in New York.

Emerging from the tragedy of Lennon’s death, Ono immersed herself in making music, releasing several albums during the decade. “It was the music that made me survive,” Ono said. After a long absence from exhibiting her art in museums and galleries, her 1989 solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Yoko Ono: Objects, Film, signaled a renewed interest in her art. She continued to exhibit extensively around the world.

In 2000 Yes Yoko Ono, a retrospective exhibition originating at the Japan Society Gallery in New York toured to thirteen international venues over four years. In 2007, Ono unveiled the IMAGINE PEACE TOWER on Videy, an island off the coast of Reykjavik, Iceland, giving a permanent home to her and Lennon’s long-standing commitment to world peace. In 2009, she was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 53rd Venice Biennale. That same year, Ono released Between My Head and the Sky, her first studio album as Plastic Ono Band since 1973. In 2018, Ono released her thirteenth solo studio album, Warzone.

Ono’s work has continued to be honored with numerous exhibitions at some of the world’s most prestigious venues, including The Museum of Modern Art in New York (2015) and Tate Modern in London (2024).

In a career spanning more than seventy years, Ono’s work as an artist and activist remains singularly relevant and continues to challenge the boundaries of artist and audience.

MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART - MCA - CHICAGO

220 East Chicago Avenue, Chicago, IL 60611

mcachicago.org

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