This is a teacher who really keeps an eye on things — three eyes, actually.
Wafaa Bilal, an assistant arts professor at New York University, said on Tuesday that a small camera had been put into his head. The zany idea is part of an art project commissioned by the Mathaf the Arab Museum of Modern Art in Qatar, an oil-rich Gulf state.
“I have now undergone the procedure to insert the camera into the back of my head as part of my art installation ‘The 3rd I,'” he said in a statement.
Iraqi-born Bilal, a well-known artist, called this a “unique conceptual piece expressed in my own unique artistic language. This new installation raises important social, aesthetic, political, technological, and artistic questions.”
Pictures show the camera to be about the size and shape of a men’s round watch.
How it will work, how it was inserted and exactly what will be photographed remain rather fuzzy. Bilal said he would reveal all at a press conference on December 15 in Qatar, when the exhibition opens.
“I am going about my daily life as I did before the procedure, but I ask for a period of rest before I am going to give any interviews,” Bilal said.
Bilal grew up in Iraq and moved to the United States (US) in 1992. His brother was killed in 2004 in Iraq by a US missile strike.
In reaction, Bilal set up a month-long exhibit in Chicago that encouraged people to fire paintballs at him 24 hours a day.