CHICAGO — Though Wafaa Bilal was born in Iraq and is based in New York, his survey at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Indulge Me, can be called a homecoming of sorts. In 2007, the accomplished yet underrated artist captured the art world’s attention with his durational performance “Domestic Tension,” wherein he lived for 30 days inside the exhibition space of Chicago’s FlatFile Gallery; a web camera broadcast his movements while a paintball gun was available for anyone to remotely fire at him via a website. Reconstructed as an open-face cubicle inside the museum’s pristine gallery space, the splatters of thousands of yellow paintballs on its interior walls do not convey the torturous persistence of the gun as forcefully as the brief video diary screened on a small monitor nearby. In an increasingly distressed voice, the goggled Bilal unironically thanks his audience for their participation as the gun processes a ceaseless string of firing commands. For a significant survey, the exhibition is remarkably spare. Curator Bana Kattan selected five major projects, each one integrating technology, performance, and a conceptual approach to the conditions of being Arab in the United States in the post-9/11 era. In “3rdi,” Bilal surgically implanted a web camera to the back of his head and attached it to an internet-connected laptop slung at his waist. Each minute, the camera would take an image and send it via the laptop to a live website feed. We are privy to an oversized presentation of a year’s worth of these images, projected on a 14-foot scrim diagonally bisecting the gallery and synced to the date and time they were originally taken. Wafaa Bilal, “Lamassu (In a Grain of Wheat)” (2025), high-resolution 3D print and bioengineered wheat grains containing a 3D scan of a Lamassu within its DNA (photo Elliot Josephine Leila Reichert/Hyperallergic)While Bilal once again submits himself to anonymous public scrutiny, making literal the Arab-American condition, the seemingly arbitrary images show the view from behind, telling us not where he is going but where he has been. The project title can be parsed as “third eye,” referring both literally to the camera and conceptually to the watchful eye of the state, but can also be read in Western-transliterated Arabizi as “my land,” pointing to the places from which Bilal has fled as a political refugee who could not look back.The latest project on view, “In a Grain of Wheat,” exhibits Bilal’s persistent concern with the technological mediation of contemporary culture. Responding to the destruction of Iraqi cultural heritage by ISIS, the artist collaborated with a scientist and coder team to scan the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s lamassu and write its form into the DNA of a grain of wheat. The specific mechanics of this process are not comprehensible via the minimal didactics presented, so viewers must accept that the sculpture lives in the wheat as an act of faith in the art and science of the project. Aptly, the work demands a devotional gesture. To partake of the wheat, one must bend down before the replica winged bull to reach for the pile of seeds at its hooves. More than two decades after the American invasion of Iraq, to see mostly young non-Arab Americans readily perform this gesture of supplication to an iconic symbol of Iraqi cultural heritage makes me think that perhaps this country has forgotten its devastating entanglement with Iraq after all. Bilal, of course, cannot.Wafaa Bilal, installation for “Virtual Jihadi,” detail (2008), video game (photo Elliot Josephine Leila Reichert/Hyperallergic)Installation view of Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me at the MCA Chicago (photo Bob [Robert Chase Heishman])Wafaa Bilal, “Domestic Tension Video Log” (2007) (photo Elliot Josephine Leila Reichert/Hyperallergic)Wafaa Bilal, interior of “Virtual Jihadi” installation (photo Bob [Robert Chase Heishman])Installation view of Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me at the MCA Chicago. Pictured: “Domestic Tension” (2007), MCA archival installation derived from the 2007 durational performance (photo Bob [Robert Chase Heishman])Installation view of Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me at the MCA Chicago. Left: “Rendering of Canto III” (2023), vinyl; right: “Canto III” (2015),bronze with gold finish (courtesy MCA Chicago)Installation view of Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me at the MCA Chicago. Pictured: “3rdi” (2010–11), archival photos from a durational performanceat Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha – Qatar (courtesy MCA Chicago)Wafaa Bilal, “Virtual Jihadi,” detail (photo Elliot Josephine Leila Reichert/Hyperallergic)Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me continues at the MCA Chicago (220 East Chicago Avenue, Chicago, Illinois) through October 19. The exhibition was curated by Bana Kattan with Iris Colburn.