Carnegie honors 20 ‘Great Immigrants,' including composer Tania León, for 20th anniversary
When León received the opportunity to leave Cuba on a resettlement flight to Miami in 1967, she took it, thinking she would eventually end up settling in France where she would join the Conservatoire de Paris and become a concert pianist. Instead, she moved to New York and within months met Arthur Mitchell, the New York City Ballet dancer who achieved international acclaim and integrated the art form as its first Black star.
'You cannot predict the future,' León told The Associated Press in an interview. 'By a chance moment, I bumped into the man that in a way changed my life… and then he spoke to me about the creation of something that he had in mind that later on became the Dance Theatre of Harlem and then I was involved in all of this.'
'All of this' – her composing, her conducting of the New York Philharmonic, her work on Broadway – led to León being honored Thursday by the Carnegie Corp. of New York as part of its 20th class of Great Immigrants, Great Americans.
'I am just overwhelmed with this latest recognition about what I have been able to contribute because I didn't do it with the purpose of gaining awards and things like that,' Leon said. 'I think that one has to convey the gratitude for the opportunities that I have received since I arrived.'
The 20 members of this year's class of Great Immigrants, Great Americans represent a wide range of immigration journeys, but they share a desire to give back to the country that has become their home. What the Carnegie initiative celebrates is also how American immigrants have improved their country.
'For 20 years, our Great Immigrants public awareness initiative has been a reminder that many of the most influential figures in our country have been distinguished naturalized citizens, like our founder Andrew Carnegie, born in Scotland,' Carnegie President Dame Louise Richardson — also a naturalized American citizen, born in Ireland — said in a statement. 'The U.S. is a nation of immigrants and our ongoing support of nonpartisan organizations that help establish legal pathways for citizenship continues to enrich the very fabric of American life.'
British-born Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management professor Simon Johnson, another honoree from this year's Great Immigrants class, said immigrants have also enriched the American economy.
'If people come to the United States, with very few exceptions, they come because they want to work,' said Johnson, who won the 2024 Nobel memorial prize in economics with two other American immigrants, Turkish-born Daron Acemoglu and fellow Brit, James Robinson. 'They want to work hard. They want to be productive. They want to improve their lives and have better futures for their kids… That dynamism we have is a big part of what's going well in many parts of the U.S.'
Johnson said the immigrant perspective helped the team on its prize-winning study, which studied countries and found that freer, open societies are more likely to prosper. And the support that academia in the United States provides is also helpful.
'American universities have incredible opportunities — lots of time for research, really interesting teaching, great students — it's an amazing combination,' he said. 'I've been incredibly lucky because it's a space that allows you to work hard and get lucky.'
This year's honorees are named as immigration becomes an increasingly contentious issue. President Donald Trump's administration is looking to add $150 billion to support his mass deportation agenda, which has drawn protests, as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement looks to arrest 3,000 people in the country illegally each day.
Maria Teresa Kumar, president and CEO of the civic engagement nonprofit Voto Latino and another of Carnegie's 2024 honorees, said the anti-immigration sentiment is painful on so many levels.
'A multicultural America is our secret superpower,' said Kumar, who emigrated from Colombia with her family when she was four years old. 'There are plenty of people in foreign interference that try to divide our country around race and status because they know that multiculturally, when human capital is what's going to determine the 21st Century, we are truly unstoppable… It's that diversity and value of thought that makes us really strong. And what's happening right now seems like we are impeding our progress because we're not seeing the bigger picture.'
Kumar and Voto Latino have been outspoken with their criticism of the Trump administration and have directed some of their resources toward keeping immigrants informed of their rights and offering advice to deal with ICE raids.
Geri Mannion, managing director of Carnegie's Strengthening U.S. Democracy Program, which oversees the Great Immigrants, Great American awards and other civic participation initiatives, said they will continue handing out the awards because immigrants help the United States on multiple levels.
Carnegie is also marking the 20th anniversary with a free comic book that celebrates the lives of previous honorees, including Rock and Roll Hall of Famer David Byrne, Peabody Award-winning comedian Mo Amer, and Jim Lee, the chief creative officer of the DC comics universe. The comic will also be used by the National Council of Teachers of English to develop lesson plans and other educational resources.
'In other countries, you could be there three generations, but you might be seen still seen as the other,' she said. 'In the U.S., you're considered American the moment you take that oath. And nobody thinks twice about it.'
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Carnegie Corp. of New York's 2025 Class of Great Immigrants, Great Americans is: Calendly founder and CEO, Tope Awotona, originally from Nigeria; Moungi Bawendi, Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor of chemistry (France); Helen M. Blau, Director of the Baxter Laboratory for Stem Cell Biology and Stanford University professor (England); Roger Cohen, New York Times journalist and Paris Bureau Chief (England); Akiko Iwasaki, Yale University School of Medicine professor of Immunobiology, Dermatology, and Epidemiology (Japan); comedian/actor Maz Jobrani (Iran); MIT Sloan School of Management entrepreneurship professor Simon Johnson (England); Kynisca CEO Michele Kang, owner of the Washington Spirit (South Korea); Flex-N-Gate CEO Shahid Khan (Pakistan); AAPI Equity Alliance executive director Manjusha P. Kulkarni (India); Voto Latino CEO María Teresa Kumar (Colombia); composer/conductor Tania León (Cuba); Northwell Health vice president Sandra Leisa Lindsay (Jamaica); Howard Hughes Medical Institute professor and microbiologist Luciano Marraffini (Argentina); Yale professor of astronomy and physics Priyamvada Natarajan (India); comedian/artist Kareem Rahma (Egypt); California U.S. Rep. Raúl Ruiz (Mexico); Manoochehr Sadeghi, grand master of the santur, the Persian dulcimer (Iran); former prima ballerina Yuan Yuan Tan, of the San Francisco Ballet (China); and Avi Wigderson, mathematics professor at the Institute for Advanced Study (Israel).
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Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP's collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP's philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
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Los Angeles Times
30 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
His immigrant mother named him after a sun god. Now Tonatiuh is a breakout star
Amid brightly colored stands selling spices, candies and imitation Labubus in all shades, the mono-monikered actor Tonatiuh sips on a hibiscus agua fresca at El Mercadito in Boyle Heights. The indoor market has been a staple of Latino life and commerce since it opened in the late 1960s. Not far from here, his aunt still runs the business that she and Tonatiuh's mother, an immigrant from the Mexican state of Guanajuato, opened decades ago. 'My mom cut hair for a long time, so I grew up in a beauty salon,' he says, casually dressed in a light blue button-up shirt. 'That's why I talk so much.' The school Tonatiuh attended as a kid, Our Lady of Lourdes, is also in the vicinity, as is the place where he learned to ride a bicycle, Hollenbeck Park. To say that the streets of Boyle Heights, where he was born, nurtured his worldview would be an understatement. 'These last few months have been really difficult,' Tonatiuh tells me, referencing the recent ICE raids that have ravaged the fabric of the city. He calls them vicious: a 'PR cycle against people with dignity, taxpaying individuals who are feeding their families and running businesses, quite literally living the American dream, as cliché as that may sound. ' Even as his own dreams are beginning to materialize, Tonatiuh, 30, remains tethered to these places and people. His career is about to launch into Hollywood's firmament with a dual role in director Bill Condon's screen adaptation of the stage musical version of 'Kiss of the Spider Woman' (in theaters Oct. 10). The rising Mexican American actor shares dramatic space with superstars Jennifer Lopez and Diego Luna. Reviews out of the Sundance Film Festival, where the movie debuted in January, praised Tonatiuh's performance as a breakthrough. His electrifying turn is equal parts heart-wrenching, deliciously irreverent and technically impressive. For the bulk of the film, Tonatiuh plays Luis Molina, a passionate gay prisoner in jail during Argentina's 1970s-era Dirty War who is infatuated with the dazzling escapism of the movies — especially with the allure of fictional screen diva Ingrid Luna (a standout Lopez). Molina indulges in fantasies to stay sane, a dreamscape we experience as scenes from a 1940s classic Hollywood musical. In them, Tonatiuh sings and dances as the dashing Kendall Nesbitt dressed to the nines in elegant tuxes. The musical portion of the film was shot in New York, while for the prison sequences only involving Tonatiuh and Diego Luna as Valentin, a rugged revolutionary, the production relocated to Uruguay. The effect, Tonaituh says, was like making two separate movies. To perform alongside Lopez, he rehearsed with Broadway dancers for a month leading up to the shooting. 'When I first met Jennifer, I was like, 'Oh my God, that's Jennifer Lopez, what the hell?'' he recalls with contagious energy. 'I must have turned left on the wrong street because now I'm standing in front of her. How did this happen? What life am I living?' One would think Tonatiuh's mother knew he was destined to become a star when naming him after the brightest heavenly body. 'She had a dream when she was pregnant with me where she was in a field surrounded by golden orbs and they turned into the sun,' he explains. 'And because of the Aztec mythology of Tonatiuh being the sun god, she woke up from the dream and was like, 'My kid's name is going to be Tonatiuh.'' Growing up around Latinos, his Indigenous name didn't raise eyebrows. But that changed once Tonatiuh got a taste of the demands of assimilation. 'As we moved to West Covina, everyone tried to impose their anglicized identity onto me, and I went with it for many years,' he says. 'Then I started realizing, 'Why am I denying even my own name to fit in?' It's so stupid.' The entertainment industry proved just as unwilling to accept all of him. Those advising him warned him to play ball. 'It's already hard enough given the way you look,' Tonatiuh recalls hearing from them. 'I was just like, 'Are we going to change my name to Albert?'' As for his last name, Elizarraraz, he conceded it might be a bridge too far for English-only speakers. 'My first name's already difficult enough,' Tonatiuh says. 'They are not ready for that.' Increasingly, he found the concept of a mononym enticing. 'I was like, 'How many other Tonatiuhs are in the industry?' I looked it up on SAG, and it was just me,' he says. Enamored with drama from a young age, Tonatiuh remembers watching James Cameron's 'Titanic' on VHS as a formative experience. But it wasn't until a friend's mother invited him to see a live performance of 'Wicked' when he was a teenager that acting grabbed him. 'I like stories with a hook and a bite to it,' he says. ''Wicked' is about segregation and the rise of it in America. But it's in metaphor. 'Animal Farm' is the same way. There are beautiful, entertaining works that are also poignant, with messaging. That messaging is what's most interesting to me.' Despite his love of performing and storytelling, a more conventional path seemed likely. At the end of high school, Tonatiuh had been accepted to multiple universities to study political science. 'I have a very strong intolerance to injustice,' he says, a past victim of bullying and, like many children of immigrants, his mother's de facto translator and legal avatar. 'In my mind, I was like, I can help and be of most use if I became a lawyer or a politician.' But thanks to an English teacher who suggested he should instead pursue his true passion, Tonatiuh doubled down on acting. His mother would drive him in traffic from West Covina to the South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa every morning before work so that he could have a chance at a proper acting education. 'I must have done something to earn her, because she's such a loving person and her biggest thing was that she just wanted me to be happy,' he says of his devoted parent. Formal training at USC followed, though Tonatiuh still felt uncertain on how to carve out space for himself, joining local L.A. theater companies while auditioning for TV and film roles. 'The hardest part of acting is the auditions, because it's awkward,' he says. 'Once you put the pieces in place, submitting to the story and using the words as your weapons to guide you through it, acting is just so fun.' Showrunner Tanya Saracho became aware of Tonatiuh after seeing him in a play. She invited him to join the ensemble of 'Vida,' a series filmed in his native Boyle Heights, in the role of Marcos, an academically accomplished queer man. Sociopolitically outspoken material has shaped Tonatiuh's resume so far: 'Vida' dealt with gentrification, while the 2022 ABC series 'Promised Land' followed undocumented characters who amassed power by way of wealth. Now, 'Kiss of the Spider Woman' examines authoritarianism through a queer lens. 'My body is being used for a purpose much greater than just entertainment,' he says. 'I didn't have any nepotism. I was very fortunate that people believed in me, and they gave me opportunities.' 'Spider Woman' director Condon credits producer Ben Affleck with the liberty to cast someone talented but not yet a household name. 'He said, 'I know how important this is,'' Condon, an Oscar winner for 1998's 'Gods and Monsters,' recalls. 'He took that off the table right away.' The search for Condon's Molina/Kendall was as extensive as the one he did for Effie in his film version of 'Dreamgirls' 20 years earlier, the role that famously went to singer Jennifer Hudson. 'Hundreds of actors in South America, Central America, Mexico, Spain, New York, Los Angeles, London and other cities,' remembers Condon. 'But it wasn't like with all those hundreds there were dozens of credible choices. There were really just a handful.' Among them, Tonatiuh grabbed attention on a self-taped audition. Condon sought someone who could be persuasive within the gritty realism of a prison movie, while also credibly being a larger-than-life Hollywood musical star. Tonatiuh inhabited both modes seamlessly. 'Tona has the most extraordinary, open, beautiful face,' Condon says. 'And his eyes just invite you in. There's a lot of camp humor and that's not something that comes naturally to someone of Tona's generation, but he just has it in his bones. But it's the depth of feeling that he can convey that mattered most.' Tonatiuh seized the chance to play two distinctly complex characters within one movie. His task, he says, was injecting contemporary ideas about queerness into a period piece. 'When I got this one, it felt super special because I don't think Hollywood always gives people like me an opportunity to play a character this dynamic,' Tonatiuh says. 'There is such a return when Hollywood invests in Latin talent and treats us like normal people. Give us a good story. We're not a genre.' And though he and Condon discussed Molina's mindset as well as the historical context and circumstances, Tonatiuh reveled in creative freedom because he wasn't the focus of intense supervision. 'There was a certain level of mischief and magic that was happening because I was the least-known person on set,' he says. 'And a lot of the eyes were on everyone else.' (That cover of anonymity might not last long.) Throughout the production, Tonatiuh felt that 'Kiss of the Spider Woman' spoke to his aspirations directly, not only to those of his characters. 'There was this moment where Jennifer looked at me in the song 'Where You Are,' and sang, 'Close your eyes and you'll become a movie star. Why must you stay where you are?' And in a weird way, it's happening.' Tonatiuh flew his mother and stepfather out to New York to witness 'Where You Are,' an imposing musical number involving close to 70 people in front of the camera. When Lopez and Tonatiuh performed their dance duet, his mother was in awe. 'Now she wants to be Kris Jenner — she wants to be the momager,' Tonatiuh says, only half-joking. 'In this time where Latinos are getting a lot of s—, it makes me really happy that I can bring her some pride.' Yet, his mother hasn't seen the finished film. He wants her to experience it at the upcoming premiere. 'I want her to get the full experience of getting to walk the carpet,' he says. His eyes wet, Tonatiuh recalls an emotional scene with Luna's Valentin, Molina's improbable love interest, that once again seemed to him as if film and his reality were in direct conversation. 'When I'm telling Valentin, 'The film's almost over and I don't want it to end,' it broke my heart because I realized that the film was actually almost over and I didn't want it to end,' he says. 'I bawled my eyes out as if I'd lost the love of my life, and that, for me as a person — what a gift, because it's fake but it was real for me.' Since wrapping 'Kiss of the Spider Woman,' Tonatiuh has acted in Jeremy O. Harris' play 'Spirit of the People' and Ryan Murphy's upcoming series 'American Love Story.' For his next act, he wants to start from scratch. 'I want to do something completely different than Molina because I love being a shape-shifter,' he says. 'I want to be unrecognizable every time I come on screen.'
Los Angeles Times
30 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
Spinal Tap is back and ready to talk. Just don't bring up the last movie
I'm a minute into my interview with Spinal Tap and I've already angered vocalist David St. Hubbins. Sitting down with the rock trio, which includes lead guitarist Nigel Tufnel and bassist Derek Smalls, I mention what an honor it is to speak to the legendary group. 'Just slow your roll,' Tap's frontman barks. 'You don't know it's a real honor until you start. So start, and you'll find out if it is.' Not an auspicious beginning to an hour-long conversation with England's loudest and most punctual band. But a bit of testiness is understandable. On this late July morning at Studio 1 Culver, Tap begins its promotional duties for the long-awaited sequel to 1984's 'This Is Spinal Tap,' the documentary that unwittingly revitalized the pioneering metal group's career. The world is wondering if lightning will strike twice, so a lot is on the line for Tap. In fact, you can feel the tension as video crews and production personnel dart anxiously through the cavernous studio. Earlier in the day, I had separately seen each of the band members preparing for our interview, which was to be in character. Michael McKean, 77, sat in a makeup chair, eyes closed, as the wig that transforms him into St. Hubbins was being fussed over. I accidentally bumped into Harry Shearer, 81, in a conference room, not yet fully decked out as Smalls. And, later, Christopher Guest, 77, was spotted pacing around as Tufnel, speaking in the axman's jabbing working-class English accent to an assistant. Now, though, as we all sit together in this quiet side room, the guys are fully Tapped in as the fictional band members, focused on the expectations surrounding this forthcoming film. Back in 1984, director Marty DiBergi (better known as Rob Reiner) chronicled the trio during their disastrous American tour, one that seemed to signal the group's death knell. Instead, Spinal Tap have enjoyed many afterlives, occasionally reuniting before dissolving into acrimony once again. Consequently, there's plenty of fan curiosity about 'Spinal Tap II: The End Continues' (opening Sept. 12), which follows the behind-the-scenes preparations for Tap's latest — and maybe last? — comeback show, the group's first public performance since 2009. It should be a triumphant moment, but there's one problem: DiBergi has yet to show them the movie. 'Marty's hiding something,' Smalls says, concerned. He looks to his bandmates for reassurance, his soulful eyes framed by his still fabulously bushy eyebrows. 'I don't know about that,' replies St. Hubbins, trying to stay positive. Even all these years later, he's a natural leader hoping to keep this boat from capsizing.'The first film didn't really portray us in the best light. But I still think it was from a good place. I don't think he was setting out to do anything wrong.' 'But he managed it, somehow,' Tufnel chimes in. He seems grumpy, like he's not entirely happy to be here. In a separate Zoom interview, DiBergi explains why he's dragging his feet: He's nervous how Tap will respond. 'They were very upset with the way I portrayed them,' he tells me. 'I thought I showed them in a good light but I guess they felt that I showed too many of the warts and not enough of the clear skin.' Indeed the guys are still salty about how they came off in 'This Is Spinal Tap.' Smalls, for one, is tired of people making fun of them for getting lost on the way to the stage during that infamous Cleveland show. 'Many times during that tour, we got to the stage,' Smalls points out, proudly. 'And as an addendum,' St. Hubbins adds, 'if Marty had the information — 'Oh, you want to go through this door' — he could have told us.' If the mighty musical force behind such stone-cold bangers as 'Big Bottom' and 'Sex Farm' weren't thrilled at how they were portrayed in the first film, they will not be pleased to learn that, 41 years later, they continue to be captured exhibiting hopelessly moronic behavior. (One of Smalls' musical contributions to the new film is a song titled 'Rockin' in the Urn,' which is about head-banging after cremation.) But what's less expected are the faintest hints of maturity in a band celebrated for stuffing its trousers and mistaking being sexist for being sexy. Have the guys who once wrote 'Bitch School' finally become enlightened? 'Well, certainly they've changed physically,' DiBergi tells me. 'They're in their 70s now. But as far as their music and their outlook on life, I didn't see a whole lot of growth there. I talked to their promoter. He said that he was surprised at how little they had grown emotionally or musically. They did grow wrinkles on their face.' Noticeably, none of the bandmates sit closely together in the room, each in his own chair in a circle staring at one another. Where once they were garish young rockers buried under mascara, now they are garish older rockers, desperately hanging onto their youth. St. Hubbins' hair is bleached blond, while Tufnel's makeup does nothing to hide the years. Smalls' mustache still looks magnificent. The atmosphere is cordial, if not exactly warm. 'Spinal Tap II' reveals that they now live in different parts of the globe — St. Hubbins in Morro Bay, Calif.; Tufnel in Berwick-upon-Tweed in Northern England; Smalls in London — and haven't spoken since the last comeback tour. Still, they try to be philosophical about the unspoken friction between them. 'We last played together before all this in 2009,' St. Hubbins explains. 'A lot has happened since then. That tour didn't end terribly well. It's a personal thing — we've worked it out, we've managed to forget most of it. So we did have a lot of time to be apart and to think, 'How did we get here? Do we like it here? Would we like to go somewhere else — is there a taxi that can take us there?'' Nonetheless, the guys know how lucky they are. Never mind how many of their drummers have died along the way. (In 'Spinal Tap II,' their attempts to recruit all-stars like Questlove and Lars Ulrich go nowhere because everyone is too scared to sign up for the gig.) So many of their peers are now gone. A week before we speak, Ozzy Osbourne succumbed to a fatal heart attack. Not that Tap ever resorted to biting the head off a bat. 'We had doves,' St. Hubbins points out. 'We didn't bite them. Some of them bit us.' 'We killed them,' notes Smalls. 'Well, that was an accident,' St. Hubbins says. 'They suffocated — that was a packing issue. Should have used more peanuts.' It's a remarkable thing to be alive long enough to see this once-derided band finally getting its due. But as 'Spinal Tap II' demonstrates, metal bands get respectable if they last long enough, which might explain why Elton John and Paul McCartney show up in the new film to pay tribute. Even the reviewers have gotten kinder, although St. Hubbins has little nice to say about the press, recalling his least-favorite question a journalist ever asked him: What's the meaning of life? 'It was all I could do to keep from slapping her for even asking that,' he grumbles. 'It was just a sneaky, ultra-personal question, because I do know the meaning of life but I'm not going to tell anyone. Work it out yourself.' They're happier reminiscing about the band's early days, when childhood chums St. Hubbins and Tufnel first formed as the Thamesmen, later bringing on Smalls. 'David was always the restless one,' recalls Tufnel. 'He was always searching for something to write about. Derek was always the quiet one. He'd nod a lot and we'd think, 'He must know the answer.' It turned out he had a neck thing — but he knows when to say things and when not to.' Rock 'n' roll, of course, isn't just Tap's abiding passion but also one of its principal lyrical concerns. 'Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight,' 'Heavy Duty' and 'The Majesty of Rock' saluted the glory of power chords and swaggering attitude. The band has also recorded its fair share of songs about fame and Stonehenge, but the trio have largely shied away from politics. During these dark, divisive days, has there been a temptation to sing about the state of the world? 'I would consider writing a song telling people that we're not going to write any songs about politics,' St. Hubbins counters. 'That would be useful — then people would stop asking questions like that. No offense.' Is this something that comes up a lot with journalists? 'Never,' he replies. 'You're the first. But we're drawing the line there.' 'Can I ask a question?' Tufnel interjects, confused. 'This has begun? The interview?' Of the three musicians, Tufnel seems the most different since the first film. Now happily operating a small cheese shop and living contentedly with his girlfriend, he mostly avoids the spotlight. But when asked what he'd tell his younger self, he gets alarmed. 'If the older us is going back [in time], the younger one would probably have a heart attack — it's a frightening idea,' he says. Some will accuse Spinal Tap of going for a cynical cash grab with this new film, which will be accompanied by a new album and a written oral history, 'A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever: The Story of Spinal Tap.' But the band strenuously denies that accusation. 'That doesn't apply to us,' Tufnel says. 'Because there's no cash,' Smalls admits. Tufnel nods. 'There's no cash involved in our careers, basically.' And in regard to whether this latest reunion will stick, previous ones certainly didn't. But you can't keep a good made-up rock band down. 'It's better and worse than a family,' Tufnel says of Tap's bond, 'because you have closeness — and the tension and the resentment and the hatred.' 'The thing that's different about this family,' St. Hubbins adds, 'is there's no one richer than us who's going to leave us any money. Families often have that to look forward to.' 'Everybody in the world is richer than us,' Tufnel declares, which gets a surprised laugh out of McKean. Not St. Hubbins, but McKean, who seems delighted by his longtime partner. Perhaps Spinal Tap's musical heyday is over, but they can still crack each other up. Who knows: Maybe these guys have a future in comedy.
Chicago Tribune
30 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
Artist Wafaa Bilal believes laughter is resistance. Look for his ‘Amreeka' comedy show at the MCA.
During Wafaa Bilal's childhood in Kufa, Iraq, his parents held one rule above all others: Do not, under any circumstances, talk about the regime. The young artist and his friends wondered if the walls had ears. So, they devised a workaround. They would gather at the middle of the intersection in their neighborhood, tell each other the latest joke about Saddam Hussein's government, then dash away. Bilal, 59, now thinks of those meetups as an 'underground comedy club.' 'We understood how to deal with oppression through laughter,' he said. 'That was a form of empowerment.' The traveling standup show 'Amreeka' is a grown-up version of that club. Curated by Bilal, the show features a rotating roster of comics opining about 'Amreeka' — a playful reference to how 'America' is pronounced by some in the Arabic-speaking diaspora and elsewhere. It started as a monthly series in New York, where Bilal lives and works as a professor at New York University. On Friday, it comes to the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, which is currently hosting 'Indulge Me,' Bilal's first major art retrospective. It's fitting that 'Indulge Me' and 'Amreeka' will both roost here, in the city that most shaped his practice. Bilal arrived in the U.S. in 1992, after two years of living in a refugee camp in Saudi Arabia. A month after he arrived in Chicago in 2001 to pursue an MFA at the School of the Art Institute, the 9/11 attacks stunned the world. In Bilal's recollection, the school went from an 'apolitical conceptual art school' to 'political' almost overnight. 'Then it dawned on me,' he said, 'that I was at the epicenter of this political storm.' Bilal describes his art from those early years as 'antagonizing.' His 2001 video installation titled 'Al Qaeda R Us' confronted viewers with images of American military valor juxtaposed against the bloody human toll of those campaigns. 'The very people who contributed to the demise of my homeland were so oblivious to what happened,' he said. 'So, automatically, the work was pointing fingers at them, implicating them in the destruction of my life.' He credits his time at SAIC as redirecting him from didactic art toward an ethos of radical, even provocative, interactivity. He went on to become an adjunct professor there before getting hired by NYU in 2008. Bilal's change in approach was also shaped by a personal tragedy. His brother Haji was killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2004; their father, heartbroken, died shortly thereafter. Those losses — as well as a TV interview with an operator of an American drone, like the one that likely killed Haji — inspired Bilal to stage his most famous work, 'Domestic Tension' in 2007. For a month, Bilal lived in a makeshift room in the former FlatFile Gallery in the West Loop, while remote strangers could choose to shoot him — or not — with a web-operated paintball gun. He streamed the carnage in real-time, 24/7, via live cam. Bilal wanted to name the project 'Shoot an Iraqi.' The gallery talked him out of it. Since then, Bilal has pursued other daredevil experiments that push political satire to grim extremes. Between 2010 and 2011, Bilal surgically implanted a livestream camera in the back of his head as commentary on state surveillance; he had to end the project after a year when the scalp area became infected. Another project — a hacked video game he called 'Virtual Jihadi,' which visitors can play for themselves in 'Indulge Me' — was shut down almost immediately upon its display at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute outside Albany, New York, in 2008. A forthcoming MCA commission pokes fun at a rumored plan by Iraqi Baathists to launch a massive bust of Saddam Hussein into Earth's orbit. Bilal plans to do the same and document its path via video feed. Of course, there's a catch: While the spacebound Hussein will appear larger than life on the video feed, the actual bust will be just an inch. Ultimately, it will burn up in Earth's atmosphere, symbolizing the futility and hubris of the original project. Curating a standup show may seem like an unusual side project for an artist. But for an artist with Bilal's pitch-black sense of humor, it's almost intuitive. After moving to New York, Bilal frequented Greenwich Village's most iconic standup venues. He counts Jon Stewart — 'The Daily Show' host who became an early critic of the Iraq War — as a personal favorite, along with Jerry Seinfeld, 'regardless of what his politics are,' he said. The first 'Amreeka,' in 2016, was accidentally timed mere days after Donald Trump's first presidential win. Bilal considered canceling that show. Instead, it went forward, doubling as much as a group therapy session as a comedy show. 'The big fear was, how are we going to be targeted as Muslims, or as an Arab minority?' Bilal said. 'In order to do standup, you have to have a community, because standup relies on cultural reference.' That has been 'Amreeka's' guiding philosophy ever since. The MCA's 'Amreeka' session will be headlined by Suzie Afridi, a Christian Palestinian comic who often speaks about her relationship with her husband, an artist from a Muslim Pakistani family. Sharif Hasan, a Palestinian-American comic on the creative team of 'The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon,' also will perform. But 'Amreeka' is not limited to comics with Arab roots. Also on the bill are Charles McBee and Shane Anthony, Black comics from the Midwest whose work pokes fun at American racial politics. 'It ended up being about all disfranchised people, from queer (people) to African-Americans to Middle Easterners,' Bilal said. '(We) have the same rules and rights as everyone else — and the right to complain. That's what America is.'
