The Ashes Series: Dark Palace

In 1992, Iraqi-born artist Wafaa Bilal arrived in the United States, having fled Saddam Hussein’s regime and spent two years in refugee camps. More than a decade later, he watched the American war in Iraq unfold in the media and claim the lives of his brother and father. Seeking connection with home, Bilal began to collect news photographs of domestic spaces in Iraq that were destroyed by violent conflict. This work is based on an image of one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces. Bilal reconstructed these images painstakingly by hand as miniature models, using materials like cardboard and plaster. For the artist this process provided, “a way for me to exist within . . . and, in a sense, to rebuild the places in Iraq where my brother and father were killed.” Before photographing the models, Bilal dusted them with 21 grams of human ashes. It is this pale substance that appears as a soft, luminous glow at the center of the photograph, a palpable reminder of human presence even where it is difficult to detect.