An oval of golden ochre encircled with black. A slight gradient within the orange, fading upwards to a cream, suggests a horizon; is this the view out of an airplane window? This is The Point 0: the first painting in Mohammed Sami’s exhibition at Camden Art Centre of the same name. Sami, born 1984 in Baghdad, graduated from the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad in 2004-5. He then worked at the Ministry of Culture in Baghdad, before being granted asylum in Sweden in 2007, where he lived for almost a decade. In 2015, Sami left his adopted country to pursue a degree at Ulster University-Belfast School of Art, and then a Masters of Fine Arts at Goldsmiths in London. The Point 0 is Sami’s first institutional solo exhibition.
There is something peaceful and meditative about this orange oval; the evocation of someone looking out of a plane window onto an empty horizon creates a moment of reflection. With knowledge of Sami’s personal narrative, and the painting’s title, this image becomes the start of a migrant’s story: the first memory of a new life. All the paintings here are anchored in Sami’s experience of being a citizen, and then a refugee, of war-inflicted Iraq. As we in Britain still closely follow the conflict in Ukraine, and our political climate is still riddled with debate around how we treat people arriving at our shores, Sami’s exhibition feels poignant and powerful.
Figures are noticeably absent from Sami’s work, yet people are invoked through the depiction of domestic scenes, empty interiors and Sami’s use of titles. Ten Siblings portrays ten mattresses stacked high; the painting is big, almost life-size, so that the mattresses loom over the viewer, the title invoking a feeling of longing for the children who slept on these beds. Elsewhere, a haunting and eerie image of washing hung out on washing lines is titled The Weeping Lines. The final image in the show – Weeping Walls III – depicts a patterned wall with what at first appears to be a bullet hole piercing its surface; on closer inspection this is a nail, on which a portrait used to hang. Sami’s creation of anthropomorphic forms evokes a sense of the surreal and a strong feeling of loss. He furthers this with a confident application of scale: objects are piled up or gathered in great numbers suggesting a sense of the immeasurable loss of life and memories, and the enormity of the time that’s passed.
Even political figures are missing: a podium stands unoccupied; the parliament sits bare. The absence of leaders strikes as a comment on the deadly consequences of empty leadership: conflict and destruction. Indeed, the depiction of the seats in the parliament room – rows of white oblongs – evokes tombstones in a cemetery. The only figures that are depicted are two portraits hung on walls –one likely of Hussein – yet each have their faces disfigured by shadow; they are decapitated by darkness. This seems like a further revolt against their leadership, a moment of quiet iconoclasm.
What is also missing are explicit depictions of violence and war, instead replaced with images of their impacts and destruction. Sami has described his interest in Arabic poetry and poetic devices, in particular Tawriya, a ‘rhetorical device that involves playing upon words that are similar in form but different in meaning. Tawriya comes from the Arabic finite verb warra: hiding something by showing something else.’ In Ashfall I, a cityscape is foregrounded with a scattering of black and white splodges of paint: the ash left floating after a fire or explosion. Sami’s exploration of scenes that obscure the violence itself, but instead offer moments of calm and reflection in its aftermath, is incredibly moving.
Sami uses brushes, palette knives and spray cans to apply paint to his canvases. His application is sometimes thick and heavy, and elsewhere scratchy and sparse, often creating a distorting sense of depth or shallowness. One is drawn to the surface of his images to inspect the layers of paint. This too evokes the mining of one’s memory; it is as if the image appears before your eye, or on the surface of the canvas, momentarily, like a memory that resurfaces. Sami’s use of spray paint to create squiggly, spiderly forms is suggestive of graffiti scrawled onto the walls of a derelict building - teenagers making images in protest, in the hope of being seen, to form an identity. Sami’s graffiti are images writ onto the surface of the past to try and understand it. Indeed, time and place are murky in Sami’s work: everything feels flipped on its head. The absence of figures, movement and details of life creates an uneasy sense of indeterminate location and timelessness. His choice of colours too – often sickly or seemingly unnatural – make the images appear as if viewed through a distorted lens: a foggy mind. These are the images of a mind remembering.
The exploration of memories and images of war feels more poignant in considering the way that the Gulf Wars (1991-2011) – through which Sami will have grown-up – were experienced through new visual technology. The Gulf Wars took place in a technologically advanced society, with a 24-hour news cycle, the Internet, and new media and military technologies; their onset in 1991 was the first time the start of a war was televised. Sami’s paintings work against the visual material that remains of these conflicts: in obscuring the violence, and re-focussing on the domestic and mundane, he offers more personal, emotive, and reflective evidencing of said Wars.
Some of the paintings here feel less developed: too lacking in detail, too flat or weak in composition. However, most of Sami’s images have a real haunting magnetism and make for fascinating viewing. One does leave reflecting on the real and lasting impacts of violent conflict.
Mohammed Sami: The Point 0 is showing at Camden Art Centre until 28th May 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
An oval of golden ochre encircled with black. A slight gradient within the orange, fading upwards to a cream, suggests a horizon; is this the view out of an airplane window? This is The Point 0: the first painting in Mohammed Sami’s exhibition at Camden Art Centre of the same name. Sami, born 1984 in Baghdad, graduated from the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad in 2004-5. He then worked at the Ministry of Culture in Baghdad, before being granted asylum in Sweden in 2007, where he lived for almost a decade. In 2015, Sami left his adopted country to pursue a degree at Ulster University-Belfast School of Art, and then a Masters of Fine Arts at Goldsmiths in London. The Point 0 is Sami’s first institutional solo exhibition.
There is something peaceful and meditative about this orange oval; the evocation of someone looking out of a plane window onto an empty horizon creates a moment of reflection. With knowledge of Sami’s personal narrative, and the painting’s title, this image becomes the start of a migrant’s story: the first memory of a new life. All the paintings here are anchored in Sami’s experience of being a citizen, and then a refugee, of war-inflicted Iraq. As we in Britain still closely follow the conflict in Ukraine, and our political climate is still riddled with debate around how we treat people arriving at our shores, Sami’s exhibition feels poignant and powerful.
Figures are noticeably absent from Sami’s work, yet people are invoked through the depiction of domestic scenes, empty interiors and Sami’s use of titles. Ten Siblings portrays ten mattresses stacked high; the painting is big, almost life-size, so that the mattresses loom over the viewer, the title invoking a feeling of longing for the children who slept on these beds. Elsewhere, a haunting and eerie image of washing hung out on washing lines is titled The Weeping Lines. The final image in the show – Weeping Walls III – depicts a patterned wall with what at first appears to be a bullet hole piercing its surface; on closer inspection this is a nail, on which a portrait used to hang. Sami’s creation of anthropomorphic forms evokes a sense of the surreal and a strong feeling of loss. He furthers this with a confident application of scale: objects are piled up or gathered in great numbers suggesting a sense of the immeasurable loss of life and memories, and the enormity of the time that’s passed.
Even political figures are missing: a podium stands unoccupied; the parliament sits bare. The absence of leaders strikes as a comment on the deadly consequences of empty leadership: conflict and destruction. Indeed, the depiction of the seats in the parliament room – rows of white oblongs – evokes tombstones in a cemetery. The only figures that are depicted are two portraits hung on walls –one likely of Hussein – yet each have their faces disfigured by shadow; they are decapitated by darkness. This seems like a further revolt against their leadership, a moment of quiet iconoclasm.
What is also missing are explicit depictions of violence and war, instead replaced with images of their impacts and destruction. Sami has described his interest in Arabic poetry and poetic devices, in particular Tawriya, a ‘rhetorical device that involves playing upon words that are similar in form but different in meaning. Tawriya comes from the Arabic finite verb warra: hiding something by showing something else.’ In Ashfall I, a cityscape is foregrounded with a scattering of black and white splodges of paint: the ash left floating after a fire or explosion. Sami’s exploration of scenes that obscure the violence itself, but instead offer moments of calm and reflection in its aftermath, is incredibly moving.
Sami uses brushes, palette knives and spray cans to apply paint to his canvases. His application is sometimes thick and heavy, and elsewhere scratchy and sparse, often creating a distorting sense of depth or shallowness. One is drawn to the surface of his images to inspect the layers of paint. This too evokes the mining of one’s memory; it is as if the image appears before your eye, or on the surface of the canvas, momentarily, like a memory that resurfaces. Sami’s use of spray paint to create squiggly, spiderly forms is suggestive of graffiti scrawled onto the walls of a derelict building - teenagers making images in protest, in the hope of being seen, to form an identity. Sami’s graffiti are images writ onto the surface of the past to try and understand it. Indeed, time and place are murky in Sami’s work: everything feels flipped on its head. The absence of figures, movement and details of life creates an uneasy sense of indeterminate location and timelessness. His choice of colours too – often sickly or seemingly unnatural – make the images appear as if viewed through a distorted lens: a foggy mind. These are the images of a mind remembering.
The exploration of memories and images of war feels more poignant in considering the way that the Gulf Wars (1991-2011) – through which Sami will have grown-up – were experienced through new visual technology. The Gulf Wars took place in a technologically advanced society, with a 24-hour news cycle, the Internet, and new media and military technologies; their onset in 1991 was the first time the start of a war was televised. Sami’s paintings work against the visual material that remains of these conflicts: in obscuring the violence, and re-focussing on the domestic and mundane, he offers more personal, emotive, and reflective evidencing of said Wars.
Some of the paintings here feel less developed: too lacking in detail, too flat or weak in composition. However, most of Sami’s images have a real haunting magnetism and make for fascinating viewing. One does leave reflecting on the real and lasting impacts of violent conflict.
Mohammed Sami: The Point 0 is showing at Camden Art Centre until 28th May 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
An oval of golden ochre encircled with black. A slight gradient within the orange, fading upwards to a cream, suggests a horizon; is this the view out of an airplane window? This is The Point 0: the first painting in Mohammed Sami’s exhibition at Camden Art Centre of the same name. Sami, born 1984 in Baghdad, graduated from the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad in 2004-5. He then worked at the Ministry of Culture in Baghdad, before being granted asylum in Sweden in 2007, where he lived for almost a decade. In 2015, Sami left his adopted country to pursue a degree at Ulster University-Belfast School of Art, and then a Masters of Fine Arts at Goldsmiths in London. The Point 0 is Sami’s first institutional solo exhibition.
There is something peaceful and meditative about this orange oval; the evocation of someone looking out of a plane window onto an empty horizon creates a moment of reflection. With knowledge of Sami’s personal narrative, and the painting’s title, this image becomes the start of a migrant’s story: the first memory of a new life. All the paintings here are anchored in Sami’s experience of being a citizen, and then a refugee, of war-inflicted Iraq. As we in Britain still closely follow the conflict in Ukraine, and our political climate is still riddled with debate around how we treat people arriving at our shores, Sami’s exhibition feels poignant and powerful.
Figures are noticeably absent from Sami’s work, yet people are invoked through the depiction of domestic scenes, empty interiors and Sami’s use of titles. Ten Siblings portrays ten mattresses stacked high; the painting is big, almost life-size, so that the mattresses loom over the viewer, the title invoking a feeling of longing for the children who slept on these beds. Elsewhere, a haunting and eerie image of washing hung out on washing lines is titled The Weeping Lines. The final image in the show – Weeping Walls III – depicts a patterned wall with what at first appears to be a bullet hole piercing its surface; on closer inspection this is a nail, on which a portrait used to hang. Sami’s creation of anthropomorphic forms evokes a sense of the surreal and a strong feeling of loss. He furthers this with a confident application of scale: objects are piled up or gathered in great numbers suggesting a sense of the immeasurable loss of life and memories, and the enormity of the time that’s passed.
Even political figures are missing: a podium stands unoccupied; the parliament sits bare. The absence of leaders strikes as a comment on the deadly consequences of empty leadership: conflict and destruction. Indeed, the depiction of the seats in the parliament room – rows of white oblongs – evokes tombstones in a cemetery. The only figures that are depicted are two portraits hung on walls –one likely of Hussein – yet each have their faces disfigured by shadow; they are decapitated by darkness. This seems like a further revolt against their leadership, a moment of quiet iconoclasm.
What is also missing are explicit depictions of violence and war, instead replaced with images of their impacts and destruction. Sami has described his interest in Arabic poetry and poetic devices, in particular Tawriya, a ‘rhetorical device that involves playing upon words that are similar in form but different in meaning. Tawriya comes from the Arabic finite verb warra: hiding something by showing something else.’ In Ashfall I, a cityscape is foregrounded with a scattering of black and white splodges of paint: the ash left floating after a fire or explosion. Sami’s exploration of scenes that obscure the violence itself, but instead offer moments of calm and reflection in its aftermath, is incredibly moving.
Sami uses brushes, palette knives and spray cans to apply paint to his canvases. His application is sometimes thick and heavy, and elsewhere scratchy and sparse, often creating a distorting sense of depth or shallowness. One is drawn to the surface of his images to inspect the layers of paint. This too evokes the mining of one’s memory; it is as if the image appears before your eye, or on the surface of the canvas, momentarily, like a memory that resurfaces. Sami’s use of spray paint to create squiggly, spiderly forms is suggestive of graffiti scrawled onto the walls of a derelict building - teenagers making images in protest, in the hope of being seen, to form an identity. Sami’s graffiti are images writ onto the surface of the past to try and understand it. Indeed, time and place are murky in Sami’s work: everything feels flipped on its head. The absence of figures, movement and details of life creates an uneasy sense of indeterminate location and timelessness. His choice of colours too – often sickly or seemingly unnatural – make the images appear as if viewed through a distorted lens: a foggy mind. These are the images of a mind remembering.
The exploration of memories and images of war feels more poignant in considering the way that the Gulf Wars (1991-2011) – through which Sami will have grown-up – were experienced through new visual technology. The Gulf Wars took place in a technologically advanced society, with a 24-hour news cycle, the Internet, and new media and military technologies; their onset in 1991 was the first time the start of a war was televised. Sami’s paintings work against the visual material that remains of these conflicts: in obscuring the violence, and re-focussing on the domestic and mundane, he offers more personal, emotive, and reflective evidencing of said Wars.
Some of the paintings here feel less developed: too lacking in detail, too flat or weak in composition. However, most of Sami’s images have a real haunting magnetism and make for fascinating viewing. One does leave reflecting on the real and lasting impacts of violent conflict.
Mohammed Sami: The Point 0 is showing at Camden Art Centre until 28th May 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
An oval of golden ochre encircled with black. A slight gradient within the orange, fading upwards to a cream, suggests a horizon; is this the view out of an airplane window? This is The Point 0: the first painting in Mohammed Sami’s exhibition at Camden Art Centre of the same name. Sami, born 1984 in Baghdad, graduated from the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad in 2004-5. He then worked at the Ministry of Culture in Baghdad, before being granted asylum in Sweden in 2007, where he lived for almost a decade. In 2015, Sami left his adopted country to pursue a degree at Ulster University-Belfast School of Art, and then a Masters of Fine Arts at Goldsmiths in London. The Point 0 is Sami’s first institutional solo exhibition.
There is something peaceful and meditative about this orange oval; the evocation of someone looking out of a plane window onto an empty horizon creates a moment of reflection. With knowledge of Sami’s personal narrative, and the painting’s title, this image becomes the start of a migrant’s story: the first memory of a new life. All the paintings here are anchored in Sami’s experience of being a citizen, and then a refugee, of war-inflicted Iraq. As we in Britain still closely follow the conflict in Ukraine, and our political climate is still riddled with debate around how we treat people arriving at our shores, Sami’s exhibition feels poignant and powerful.
Figures are noticeably absent from Sami’s work, yet people are invoked through the depiction of domestic scenes, empty interiors and Sami’s use of titles. Ten Siblings portrays ten mattresses stacked high; the painting is big, almost life-size, so that the mattresses loom over the viewer, the title invoking a feeling of longing for the children who slept on these beds. Elsewhere, a haunting and eerie image of washing hung out on washing lines is titled The Weeping Lines. The final image in the show – Weeping Walls III – depicts a patterned wall with what at first appears to be a bullet hole piercing its surface; on closer inspection this is a nail, on which a portrait used to hang. Sami’s creation of anthropomorphic forms evokes a sense of the surreal and a strong feeling of loss. He furthers this with a confident application of scale: objects are piled up or gathered in great numbers suggesting a sense of the immeasurable loss of life and memories, and the enormity of the time that’s passed.
Even political figures are missing: a podium stands unoccupied; the parliament sits bare. The absence of leaders strikes as a comment on the deadly consequences of empty leadership: conflict and destruction. Indeed, the depiction of the seats in the parliament room – rows of white oblongs – evokes tombstones in a cemetery. The only figures that are depicted are two portraits hung on walls –one likely of Hussein – yet each have their faces disfigured by shadow; they are decapitated by darkness. This seems like a further revolt against their leadership, a moment of quiet iconoclasm.
What is also missing are explicit depictions of violence and war, instead replaced with images of their impacts and destruction. Sami has described his interest in Arabic poetry and poetic devices, in particular Tawriya, a ‘rhetorical device that involves playing upon words that are similar in form but different in meaning. Tawriya comes from the Arabic finite verb warra: hiding something by showing something else.’ In Ashfall I, a cityscape is foregrounded with a scattering of black and white splodges of paint: the ash left floating after a fire or explosion. Sami’s exploration of scenes that obscure the violence itself, but instead offer moments of calm and reflection in its aftermath, is incredibly moving.
Sami uses brushes, palette knives and spray cans to apply paint to his canvases. His application is sometimes thick and heavy, and elsewhere scratchy and sparse, often creating a distorting sense of depth or shallowness. One is drawn to the surface of his images to inspect the layers of paint. This too evokes the mining of one’s memory; it is as if the image appears before your eye, or on the surface of the canvas, momentarily, like a memory that resurfaces. Sami’s use of spray paint to create squiggly, spiderly forms is suggestive of graffiti scrawled onto the walls of a derelict building - teenagers making images in protest, in the hope of being seen, to form an identity. Sami’s graffiti are images writ onto the surface of the past to try and understand it. Indeed, time and place are murky in Sami’s work: everything feels flipped on its head. The absence of figures, movement and details of life creates an uneasy sense of indeterminate location and timelessness. His choice of colours too – often sickly or seemingly unnatural – make the images appear as if viewed through a distorted lens: a foggy mind. These are the images of a mind remembering.
The exploration of memories and images of war feels more poignant in considering the way that the Gulf Wars (1991-2011) – through which Sami will have grown-up – were experienced through new visual technology. The Gulf Wars took place in a technologically advanced society, with a 24-hour news cycle, the Internet, and new media and military technologies; their onset in 1991 was the first time the start of a war was televised. Sami’s paintings work against the visual material that remains of these conflicts: in obscuring the violence, and re-focussing on the domestic and mundane, he offers more personal, emotive, and reflective evidencing of said Wars.
Some of the paintings here feel less developed: too lacking in detail, too flat or weak in composition. However, most of Sami’s images have a real haunting magnetism and make for fascinating viewing. One does leave reflecting on the real and lasting impacts of violent conflict.
Mohammed Sami: The Point 0 is showing at Camden Art Centre until 28th May 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
An oval of golden ochre encircled with black. A slight gradient within the orange, fading upwards to a cream, suggests a horizon; is this the view out of an airplane window? This is The Point 0: the first painting in Mohammed Sami’s exhibition at Camden Art Centre of the same name. Sami, born 1984 in Baghdad, graduated from the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad in 2004-5. He then worked at the Ministry of Culture in Baghdad, before being granted asylum in Sweden in 2007, where he lived for almost a decade. In 2015, Sami left his adopted country to pursue a degree at Ulster University-Belfast School of Art, and then a Masters of Fine Arts at Goldsmiths in London. The Point 0 is Sami’s first institutional solo exhibition.
There is something peaceful and meditative about this orange oval; the evocation of someone looking out of a plane window onto an empty horizon creates a moment of reflection. With knowledge of Sami’s personal narrative, and the painting’s title, this image becomes the start of a migrant’s story: the first memory of a new life. All the paintings here are anchored in Sami’s experience of being a citizen, and then a refugee, of war-inflicted Iraq. As we in Britain still closely follow the conflict in Ukraine, and our political climate is still riddled with debate around how we treat people arriving at our shores, Sami’s exhibition feels poignant and powerful.
Figures are noticeably absent from Sami’s work, yet people are invoked through the depiction of domestic scenes, empty interiors and Sami’s use of titles. Ten Siblings portrays ten mattresses stacked high; the painting is big, almost life-size, so that the mattresses loom over the viewer, the title invoking a feeling of longing for the children who slept on these beds. Elsewhere, a haunting and eerie image of washing hung out on washing lines is titled The Weeping Lines. The final image in the show – Weeping Walls III – depicts a patterned wall with what at first appears to be a bullet hole piercing its surface; on closer inspection this is a nail, on which a portrait used to hang. Sami’s creation of anthropomorphic forms evokes a sense of the surreal and a strong feeling of loss. He furthers this with a confident application of scale: objects are piled up or gathered in great numbers suggesting a sense of the immeasurable loss of life and memories, and the enormity of the time that’s passed.
Even political figures are missing: a podium stands unoccupied; the parliament sits bare. The absence of leaders strikes as a comment on the deadly consequences of empty leadership: conflict and destruction. Indeed, the depiction of the seats in the parliament room – rows of white oblongs – evokes tombstones in a cemetery. The only figures that are depicted are two portraits hung on walls –one likely of Hussein – yet each have their faces disfigured by shadow; they are decapitated by darkness. This seems like a further revolt against their leadership, a moment of quiet iconoclasm.
What is also missing are explicit depictions of violence and war, instead replaced with images of their impacts and destruction. Sami has described his interest in Arabic poetry and poetic devices, in particular Tawriya, a ‘rhetorical device that involves playing upon words that are similar in form but different in meaning. Tawriya comes from the Arabic finite verb warra: hiding something by showing something else.’ In Ashfall I, a cityscape is foregrounded with a scattering of black and white splodges of paint: the ash left floating after a fire or explosion. Sami’s exploration of scenes that obscure the violence itself, but instead offer moments of calm and reflection in its aftermath, is incredibly moving.
Sami uses brushes, palette knives and spray cans to apply paint to his canvases. His application is sometimes thick and heavy, and elsewhere scratchy and sparse, often creating a distorting sense of depth or shallowness. One is drawn to the surface of his images to inspect the layers of paint. This too evokes the mining of one’s memory; it is as if the image appears before your eye, or on the surface of the canvas, momentarily, like a memory that resurfaces. Sami’s use of spray paint to create squiggly, spiderly forms is suggestive of graffiti scrawled onto the walls of a derelict building - teenagers making images in protest, in the hope of being seen, to form an identity. Sami’s graffiti are images writ onto the surface of the past to try and understand it. Indeed, time and place are murky in Sami’s work: everything feels flipped on its head. The absence of figures, movement and details of life creates an uneasy sense of indeterminate location and timelessness. His choice of colours too – often sickly or seemingly unnatural – make the images appear as if viewed through a distorted lens: a foggy mind. These are the images of a mind remembering.
The exploration of memories and images of war feels more poignant in considering the way that the Gulf Wars (1991-2011) – through which Sami will have grown-up – were experienced through new visual technology. The Gulf Wars took place in a technologically advanced society, with a 24-hour news cycle, the Internet, and new media and military technologies; their onset in 1991 was the first time the start of a war was televised. Sami’s paintings work against the visual material that remains of these conflicts: in obscuring the violence, and re-focussing on the domestic and mundane, he offers more personal, emotive, and reflective evidencing of said Wars.
Some of the paintings here feel less developed: too lacking in detail, too flat or weak in composition. However, most of Sami’s images have a real haunting magnetism and make for fascinating viewing. One does leave reflecting on the real and lasting impacts of violent conflict.
Mohammed Sami: The Point 0 is showing at Camden Art Centre until 28th May 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
An oval of golden ochre encircled with black. A slight gradient within the orange, fading upwards to a cream, suggests a horizon; is this the view out of an airplane window? This is The Point 0: the first painting in Mohammed Sami’s exhibition at Camden Art Centre of the same name. Sami, born 1984 in Baghdad, graduated from the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad in 2004-5. He then worked at the Ministry of Culture in Baghdad, before being granted asylum in Sweden in 2007, where he lived for almost a decade. In 2015, Sami left his adopted country to pursue a degree at Ulster University-Belfast School of Art, and then a Masters of Fine Arts at Goldsmiths in London. The Point 0 is Sami’s first institutional solo exhibition.
There is something peaceful and meditative about this orange oval; the evocation of someone looking out of a plane window onto an empty horizon creates a moment of reflection. With knowledge of Sami’s personal narrative, and the painting’s title, this image becomes the start of a migrant’s story: the first memory of a new life. All the paintings here are anchored in Sami’s experience of being a citizen, and then a refugee, of war-inflicted Iraq. As we in Britain still closely follow the conflict in Ukraine, and our political climate is still riddled with debate around how we treat people arriving at our shores, Sami’s exhibition feels poignant and powerful.
Figures are noticeably absent from Sami’s work, yet people are invoked through the depiction of domestic scenes, empty interiors and Sami’s use of titles. Ten Siblings portrays ten mattresses stacked high; the painting is big, almost life-size, so that the mattresses loom over the viewer, the title invoking a feeling of longing for the children who slept on these beds. Elsewhere, a haunting and eerie image of washing hung out on washing lines is titled The Weeping Lines. The final image in the show – Weeping Walls III – depicts a patterned wall with what at first appears to be a bullet hole piercing its surface; on closer inspection this is a nail, on which a portrait used to hang. Sami’s creation of anthropomorphic forms evokes a sense of the surreal and a strong feeling of loss. He furthers this with a confident application of scale: objects are piled up or gathered in great numbers suggesting a sense of the immeasurable loss of life and memories, and the enormity of the time that’s passed.
Even political figures are missing: a podium stands unoccupied; the parliament sits bare. The absence of leaders strikes as a comment on the deadly consequences of empty leadership: conflict and destruction. Indeed, the depiction of the seats in the parliament room – rows of white oblongs – evokes tombstones in a cemetery. The only figures that are depicted are two portraits hung on walls –one likely of Hussein – yet each have their faces disfigured by shadow; they are decapitated by darkness. This seems like a further revolt against their leadership, a moment of quiet iconoclasm.
What is also missing are explicit depictions of violence and war, instead replaced with images of their impacts and destruction. Sami has described his interest in Arabic poetry and poetic devices, in particular Tawriya, a ‘rhetorical device that involves playing upon words that are similar in form but different in meaning. Tawriya comes from the Arabic finite verb warra: hiding something by showing something else.’ In Ashfall I, a cityscape is foregrounded with a scattering of black and white splodges of paint: the ash left floating after a fire or explosion. Sami’s exploration of scenes that obscure the violence itself, but instead offer moments of calm and reflection in its aftermath, is incredibly moving.
Sami uses brushes, palette knives and spray cans to apply paint to his canvases. His application is sometimes thick and heavy, and elsewhere scratchy and sparse, often creating a distorting sense of depth or shallowness. One is drawn to the surface of his images to inspect the layers of paint. This too evokes the mining of one’s memory; it is as if the image appears before your eye, or on the surface of the canvas, momentarily, like a memory that resurfaces. Sami’s use of spray paint to create squiggly, spiderly forms is suggestive of graffiti scrawled onto the walls of a derelict building - teenagers making images in protest, in the hope of being seen, to form an identity. Sami’s graffiti are images writ onto the surface of the past to try and understand it. Indeed, time and place are murky in Sami’s work: everything feels flipped on its head. The absence of figures, movement and details of life creates an uneasy sense of indeterminate location and timelessness. His choice of colours too – often sickly or seemingly unnatural – make the images appear as if viewed through a distorted lens: a foggy mind. These are the images of a mind remembering.
The exploration of memories and images of war feels more poignant in considering the way that the Gulf Wars (1991-2011) – through which Sami will have grown-up – were experienced through new visual technology. The Gulf Wars took place in a technologically advanced society, with a 24-hour news cycle, the Internet, and new media and military technologies; their onset in 1991 was the first time the start of a war was televised. Sami’s paintings work against the visual material that remains of these conflicts: in obscuring the violence, and re-focussing on the domestic and mundane, he offers more personal, emotive, and reflective evidencing of said Wars.
Some of the paintings here feel less developed: too lacking in detail, too flat or weak in composition. However, most of Sami’s images have a real haunting magnetism and make for fascinating viewing. One does leave reflecting on the real and lasting impacts of violent conflict.
Mohammed Sami: The Point 0 is showing at Camden Art Centre until 28th May 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
An oval of golden ochre encircled with black. A slight gradient within the orange, fading upwards to a cream, suggests a horizon; is this the view out of an airplane window? This is The Point 0: the first painting in Mohammed Sami’s exhibition at Camden Art Centre of the same name. Sami, born 1984 in Baghdad, graduated from the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad in 2004-5. He then worked at the Ministry of Culture in Baghdad, before being granted asylum in Sweden in 2007, where he lived for almost a decade. In 2015, Sami left his adopted country to pursue a degree at Ulster University-Belfast School of Art, and then a Masters of Fine Arts at Goldsmiths in London. The Point 0 is Sami’s first institutional solo exhibition.
There is something peaceful and meditative about this orange oval; the evocation of someone looking out of a plane window onto an empty horizon creates a moment of reflection. With knowledge of Sami’s personal narrative, and the painting’s title, this image becomes the start of a migrant’s story: the first memory of a new life. All the paintings here are anchored in Sami’s experience of being a citizen, and then a refugee, of war-inflicted Iraq. As we in Britain still closely follow the conflict in Ukraine, and our political climate is still riddled with debate around how we treat people arriving at our shores, Sami’s exhibition feels poignant and powerful.
Figures are noticeably absent from Sami’s work, yet people are invoked through the depiction of domestic scenes, empty interiors and Sami’s use of titles. Ten Siblings portrays ten mattresses stacked high; the painting is big, almost life-size, so that the mattresses loom over the viewer, the title invoking a feeling of longing for the children who slept on these beds. Elsewhere, a haunting and eerie image of washing hung out on washing lines is titled The Weeping Lines. The final image in the show – Weeping Walls III – depicts a patterned wall with what at first appears to be a bullet hole piercing its surface; on closer inspection this is a nail, on which a portrait used to hang. Sami’s creation of anthropomorphic forms evokes a sense of the surreal and a strong feeling of loss. He furthers this with a confident application of scale: objects are piled up or gathered in great numbers suggesting a sense of the immeasurable loss of life and memories, and the enormity of the time that’s passed.
Even political figures are missing: a podium stands unoccupied; the parliament sits bare. The absence of leaders strikes as a comment on the deadly consequences of empty leadership: conflict and destruction. Indeed, the depiction of the seats in the parliament room – rows of white oblongs – evokes tombstones in a cemetery. The only figures that are depicted are two portraits hung on walls –one likely of Hussein – yet each have their faces disfigured by shadow; they are decapitated by darkness. This seems like a further revolt against their leadership, a moment of quiet iconoclasm.
What is also missing are explicit depictions of violence and war, instead replaced with images of their impacts and destruction. Sami has described his interest in Arabic poetry and poetic devices, in particular Tawriya, a ‘rhetorical device that involves playing upon words that are similar in form but different in meaning. Tawriya comes from the Arabic finite verb warra: hiding something by showing something else.’ In Ashfall I, a cityscape is foregrounded with a scattering of black and white splodges of paint: the ash left floating after a fire or explosion. Sami’s exploration of scenes that obscure the violence itself, but instead offer moments of calm and reflection in its aftermath, is incredibly moving.
Sami uses brushes, palette knives and spray cans to apply paint to his canvases. His application is sometimes thick and heavy, and elsewhere scratchy and sparse, often creating a distorting sense of depth or shallowness. One is drawn to the surface of his images to inspect the layers of paint. This too evokes the mining of one’s memory; it is as if the image appears before your eye, or on the surface of the canvas, momentarily, like a memory that resurfaces. Sami’s use of spray paint to create squiggly, spiderly forms is suggestive of graffiti scrawled onto the walls of a derelict building - teenagers making images in protest, in the hope of being seen, to form an identity. Sami’s graffiti are images writ onto the surface of the past to try and understand it. Indeed, time and place are murky in Sami’s work: everything feels flipped on its head. The absence of figures, movement and details of life creates an uneasy sense of indeterminate location and timelessness. His choice of colours too – often sickly or seemingly unnatural – make the images appear as if viewed through a distorted lens: a foggy mind. These are the images of a mind remembering.
The exploration of memories and images of war feels more poignant in considering the way that the Gulf Wars (1991-2011) – through which Sami will have grown-up – were experienced through new visual technology. The Gulf Wars took place in a technologically advanced society, with a 24-hour news cycle, the Internet, and new media and military technologies; their onset in 1991 was the first time the start of a war was televised. Sami’s paintings work against the visual material that remains of these conflicts: in obscuring the violence, and re-focussing on the domestic and mundane, he offers more personal, emotive, and reflective evidencing of said Wars.
Some of the paintings here feel less developed: too lacking in detail, too flat or weak in composition. However, most of Sami’s images have a real haunting magnetism and make for fascinating viewing. One does leave reflecting on the real and lasting impacts of violent conflict.
Mohammed Sami: The Point 0 is showing at Camden Art Centre until 28th May 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
An oval of golden ochre encircled with black. A slight gradient within the orange, fading upwards to a cream, suggests a horizon; is this the view out of an airplane window? This is The Point 0: the first painting in Mohammed Sami’s exhibition at Camden Art Centre of the same name. Sami, born 1984 in Baghdad, graduated from the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad in 2004-5. He then worked at the Ministry of Culture in Baghdad, before being granted asylum in Sweden in 2007, where he lived for almost a decade. In 2015, Sami left his adopted country to pursue a degree at Ulster University-Belfast School of Art, and then a Masters of Fine Arts at Goldsmiths in London. The Point 0 is Sami’s first institutional solo exhibition.
There is something peaceful and meditative about this orange oval; the evocation of someone looking out of a plane window onto an empty horizon creates a moment of reflection. With knowledge of Sami’s personal narrative, and the painting’s title, this image becomes the start of a migrant’s story: the first memory of a new life. All the paintings here are anchored in Sami’s experience of being a citizen, and then a refugee, of war-inflicted Iraq. As we in Britain still closely follow the conflict in Ukraine, and our political climate is still riddled with debate around how we treat people arriving at our shores, Sami’s exhibition feels poignant and powerful.
Figures are noticeably absent from Sami’s work, yet people are invoked through the depiction of domestic scenes, empty interiors and Sami’s use of titles. Ten Siblings portrays ten mattresses stacked high; the painting is big, almost life-size, so that the mattresses loom over the viewer, the title invoking a feeling of longing for the children who slept on these beds. Elsewhere, a haunting and eerie image of washing hung out on washing lines is titled The Weeping Lines. The final image in the show – Weeping Walls III – depicts a patterned wall with what at first appears to be a bullet hole piercing its surface; on closer inspection this is a nail, on which a portrait used to hang. Sami’s creation of anthropomorphic forms evokes a sense of the surreal and a strong feeling of loss. He furthers this with a confident application of scale: objects are piled up or gathered in great numbers suggesting a sense of the immeasurable loss of life and memories, and the enormity of the time that’s passed.
Even political figures are missing: a podium stands unoccupied; the parliament sits bare. The absence of leaders strikes as a comment on the deadly consequences of empty leadership: conflict and destruction. Indeed, the depiction of the seats in the parliament room – rows of white oblongs – evokes tombstones in a cemetery. The only figures that are depicted are two portraits hung on walls –one likely of Hussein – yet each have their faces disfigured by shadow; they are decapitated by darkness. This seems like a further revolt against their leadership, a moment of quiet iconoclasm.
What is also missing are explicit depictions of violence and war, instead replaced with images of their impacts and destruction. Sami has described his interest in Arabic poetry and poetic devices, in particular Tawriya, a ‘rhetorical device that involves playing upon words that are similar in form but different in meaning. Tawriya comes from the Arabic finite verb warra: hiding something by showing something else.’ In Ashfall I, a cityscape is foregrounded with a scattering of black and white splodges of paint: the ash left floating after a fire or explosion. Sami’s exploration of scenes that obscure the violence itself, but instead offer moments of calm and reflection in its aftermath, is incredibly moving.
Sami uses brushes, palette knives and spray cans to apply paint to his canvases. His application is sometimes thick and heavy, and elsewhere scratchy and sparse, often creating a distorting sense of depth or shallowness. One is drawn to the surface of his images to inspect the layers of paint. This too evokes the mining of one’s memory; it is as if the image appears before your eye, or on the surface of the canvas, momentarily, like a memory that resurfaces. Sami’s use of spray paint to create squiggly, spiderly forms is suggestive of graffiti scrawled onto the walls of a derelict building - teenagers making images in protest, in the hope of being seen, to form an identity. Sami’s graffiti are images writ onto the surface of the past to try and understand it. Indeed, time and place are murky in Sami’s work: everything feels flipped on its head. The absence of figures, movement and details of life creates an uneasy sense of indeterminate location and timelessness. His choice of colours too – often sickly or seemingly unnatural – make the images appear as if viewed through a distorted lens: a foggy mind. These are the images of a mind remembering.
The exploration of memories and images of war feels more poignant in considering the way that the Gulf Wars (1991-2011) – through which Sami will have grown-up – were experienced through new visual technology. The Gulf Wars took place in a technologically advanced society, with a 24-hour news cycle, the Internet, and new media and military technologies; their onset in 1991 was the first time the start of a war was televised. Sami’s paintings work against the visual material that remains of these conflicts: in obscuring the violence, and re-focussing on the domestic and mundane, he offers more personal, emotive, and reflective evidencing of said Wars.
Some of the paintings here feel less developed: too lacking in detail, too flat or weak in composition. However, most of Sami’s images have a real haunting magnetism and make for fascinating viewing. One does leave reflecting on the real and lasting impacts of violent conflict.
Mohammed Sami: The Point 0 is showing at Camden Art Centre until 28th May 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
An oval of golden ochre encircled with black. A slight gradient within the orange, fading upwards to a cream, suggests a horizon; is this the view out of an airplane window? This is The Point 0: the first painting in Mohammed Sami’s exhibition at Camden Art Centre of the same name. Sami, born 1984 in Baghdad, graduated from the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad in 2004-5. He then worked at the Ministry of Culture in Baghdad, before being granted asylum in Sweden in 2007, where he lived for almost a decade. In 2015, Sami left his adopted country to pursue a degree at Ulster University-Belfast School of Art, and then a Masters of Fine Arts at Goldsmiths in London. The Point 0 is Sami’s first institutional solo exhibition.
There is something peaceful and meditative about this orange oval; the evocation of someone looking out of a plane window onto an empty horizon creates a moment of reflection. With knowledge of Sami’s personal narrative, and the painting’s title, this image becomes the start of a migrant’s story: the first memory of a new life. All the paintings here are anchored in Sami’s experience of being a citizen, and then a refugee, of war-inflicted Iraq. As we in Britain still closely follow the conflict in Ukraine, and our political climate is still riddled with debate around how we treat people arriving at our shores, Sami’s exhibition feels poignant and powerful.
Figures are noticeably absent from Sami’s work, yet people are invoked through the depiction of domestic scenes, empty interiors and Sami’s use of titles. Ten Siblings portrays ten mattresses stacked high; the painting is big, almost life-size, so that the mattresses loom over the viewer, the title invoking a feeling of longing for the children who slept on these beds. Elsewhere, a haunting and eerie image of washing hung out on washing lines is titled The Weeping Lines. The final image in the show – Weeping Walls III – depicts a patterned wall with what at first appears to be a bullet hole piercing its surface; on closer inspection this is a nail, on which a portrait used to hang. Sami’s creation of anthropomorphic forms evokes a sense of the surreal and a strong feeling of loss. He furthers this with a confident application of scale: objects are piled up or gathered in great numbers suggesting a sense of the immeasurable loss of life and memories, and the enormity of the time that’s passed.
Even political figures are missing: a podium stands unoccupied; the parliament sits bare. The absence of leaders strikes as a comment on the deadly consequences of empty leadership: conflict and destruction. Indeed, the depiction of the seats in the parliament room – rows of white oblongs – evokes tombstones in a cemetery. The only figures that are depicted are two portraits hung on walls –one likely of Hussein – yet each have their faces disfigured by shadow; they are decapitated by darkness. This seems like a further revolt against their leadership, a moment of quiet iconoclasm.
What is also missing are explicit depictions of violence and war, instead replaced with images of their impacts and destruction. Sami has described his interest in Arabic poetry and poetic devices, in particular Tawriya, a ‘rhetorical device that involves playing upon words that are similar in form but different in meaning. Tawriya comes from the Arabic finite verb warra: hiding something by showing something else.’ In Ashfall I, a cityscape is foregrounded with a scattering of black and white splodges of paint: the ash left floating after a fire or explosion. Sami’s exploration of scenes that obscure the violence itself, but instead offer moments of calm and reflection in its aftermath, is incredibly moving.
Sami uses brushes, palette knives and spray cans to apply paint to his canvases. His application is sometimes thick and heavy, and elsewhere scratchy and sparse, often creating a distorting sense of depth or shallowness. One is drawn to the surface of his images to inspect the layers of paint. This too evokes the mining of one’s memory; it is as if the image appears before your eye, or on the surface of the canvas, momentarily, like a memory that resurfaces. Sami’s use of spray paint to create squiggly, spiderly forms is suggestive of graffiti scrawled onto the walls of a derelict building - teenagers making images in protest, in the hope of being seen, to form an identity. Sami’s graffiti are images writ onto the surface of the past to try and understand it. Indeed, time and place are murky in Sami’s work: everything feels flipped on its head. The absence of figures, movement and details of life creates an uneasy sense of indeterminate location and timelessness. His choice of colours too – often sickly or seemingly unnatural – make the images appear as if viewed through a distorted lens: a foggy mind. These are the images of a mind remembering.
The exploration of memories and images of war feels more poignant in considering the way that the Gulf Wars (1991-2011) – through which Sami will have grown-up – were experienced through new visual technology. The Gulf Wars took place in a technologically advanced society, with a 24-hour news cycle, the Internet, and new media and military technologies; their onset in 1991 was the first time the start of a war was televised. Sami’s paintings work against the visual material that remains of these conflicts: in obscuring the violence, and re-focussing on the domestic and mundane, he offers more personal, emotive, and reflective evidencing of said Wars.
Some of the paintings here feel less developed: too lacking in detail, too flat or weak in composition. However, most of Sami’s images have a real haunting magnetism and make for fascinating viewing. One does leave reflecting on the real and lasting impacts of violent conflict.
Mohammed Sami: The Point 0 is showing at Camden Art Centre until 28th May 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
An oval of golden ochre encircled with black. A slight gradient within the orange, fading upwards to a cream, suggests a horizon; is this the view out of an airplane window? This is The Point 0: the first painting in Mohammed Sami’s exhibition at Camden Art Centre of the same name. Sami, born 1984 in Baghdad, graduated from the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad in 2004-5. He then worked at the Ministry of Culture in Baghdad, before being granted asylum in Sweden in 2007, where he lived for almost a decade. In 2015, Sami left his adopted country to pursue a degree at Ulster University-Belfast School of Art, and then a Masters of Fine Arts at Goldsmiths in London. The Point 0 is Sami’s first institutional solo exhibition.
There is something peaceful and meditative about this orange oval; the evocation of someone looking out of a plane window onto an empty horizon creates a moment of reflection. With knowledge of Sami’s personal narrative, and the painting’s title, this image becomes the start of a migrant’s story: the first memory of a new life. All the paintings here are anchored in Sami’s experience of being a citizen, and then a refugee, of war-inflicted Iraq. As we in Britain still closely follow the conflict in Ukraine, and our political climate is still riddled with debate around how we treat people arriving at our shores, Sami’s exhibition feels poignant and powerful.
Figures are noticeably absent from Sami’s work, yet people are invoked through the depiction of domestic scenes, empty interiors and Sami’s use of titles. Ten Siblings portrays ten mattresses stacked high; the painting is big, almost life-size, so that the mattresses loom over the viewer, the title invoking a feeling of longing for the children who slept on these beds. Elsewhere, a haunting and eerie image of washing hung out on washing lines is titled The Weeping Lines. The final image in the show – Weeping Walls III – depicts a patterned wall with what at first appears to be a bullet hole piercing its surface; on closer inspection this is a nail, on which a portrait used to hang. Sami’s creation of anthropomorphic forms evokes a sense of the surreal and a strong feeling of loss. He furthers this with a confident application of scale: objects are piled up or gathered in great numbers suggesting a sense of the immeasurable loss of life and memories, and the enormity of the time that’s passed.
Even political figures are missing: a podium stands unoccupied; the parliament sits bare. The absence of leaders strikes as a comment on the deadly consequences of empty leadership: conflict and destruction. Indeed, the depiction of the seats in the parliament room – rows of white oblongs – evokes tombstones in a cemetery. The only figures that are depicted are two portraits hung on walls –one likely of Hussein – yet each have their faces disfigured by shadow; they are decapitated by darkness. This seems like a further revolt against their leadership, a moment of quiet iconoclasm.
What is also missing are explicit depictions of violence and war, instead replaced with images of their impacts and destruction. Sami has described his interest in Arabic poetry and poetic devices, in particular Tawriya, a ‘rhetorical device that involves playing upon words that are similar in form but different in meaning. Tawriya comes from the Arabic finite verb warra: hiding something by showing something else.’ In Ashfall I, a cityscape is foregrounded with a scattering of black and white splodges of paint: the ash left floating after a fire or explosion. Sami’s exploration of scenes that obscure the violence itself, but instead offer moments of calm and reflection in its aftermath, is incredibly moving.
Sami uses brushes, palette knives and spray cans to apply paint to his canvases. His application is sometimes thick and heavy, and elsewhere scratchy and sparse, often creating a distorting sense of depth or shallowness. One is drawn to the surface of his images to inspect the layers of paint. This too evokes the mining of one’s memory; it is as if the image appears before your eye, or on the surface of the canvas, momentarily, like a memory that resurfaces. Sami’s use of spray paint to create squiggly, spiderly forms is suggestive of graffiti scrawled onto the walls of a derelict building - teenagers making images in protest, in the hope of being seen, to form an identity. Sami’s graffiti are images writ onto the surface of the past to try and understand it. Indeed, time and place are murky in Sami’s work: everything feels flipped on its head. The absence of figures, movement and details of life creates an uneasy sense of indeterminate location and timelessness. His choice of colours too – often sickly or seemingly unnatural – make the images appear as if viewed through a distorted lens: a foggy mind. These are the images of a mind remembering.
The exploration of memories and images of war feels more poignant in considering the way that the Gulf Wars (1991-2011) – through which Sami will have grown-up – were experienced through new visual technology. The Gulf Wars took place in a technologically advanced society, with a 24-hour news cycle, the Internet, and new media and military technologies; their onset in 1991 was the first time the start of a war was televised. Sami’s paintings work against the visual material that remains of these conflicts: in obscuring the violence, and re-focussing on the domestic and mundane, he offers more personal, emotive, and reflective evidencing of said Wars.
Some of the paintings here feel less developed: too lacking in detail, too flat or weak in composition. However, most of Sami’s images have a real haunting magnetism and make for fascinating viewing. One does leave reflecting on the real and lasting impacts of violent conflict.
Mohammed Sami: The Point 0 is showing at Camden Art Centre until 28th May 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
An oval of golden ochre encircled with black. A slight gradient within the orange, fading upwards to a cream, suggests a horizon; is this the view out of an airplane window? This is The Point 0: the first painting in Mohammed Sami’s exhibition at Camden Art Centre of the same name. Sami, born 1984 in Baghdad, graduated from the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad in 2004-5. He then worked at the Ministry of Culture in Baghdad, before being granted asylum in Sweden in 2007, where he lived for almost a decade. In 2015, Sami left his adopted country to pursue a degree at Ulster University-Belfast School of Art, and then a Masters of Fine Arts at Goldsmiths in London. The Point 0 is Sami’s first institutional solo exhibition.
There is something peaceful and meditative about this orange oval; the evocation of someone looking out of a plane window onto an empty horizon creates a moment of reflection. With knowledge of Sami’s personal narrative, and the painting’s title, this image becomes the start of a migrant’s story: the first memory of a new life. All the paintings here are anchored in Sami’s experience of being a citizen, and then a refugee, of war-inflicted Iraq. As we in Britain still closely follow the conflict in Ukraine, and our political climate is still riddled with debate around how we treat people arriving at our shores, Sami’s exhibition feels poignant and powerful.
Figures are noticeably absent from Sami’s work, yet people are invoked through the depiction of domestic scenes, empty interiors and Sami’s use of titles. Ten Siblings portrays ten mattresses stacked high; the painting is big, almost life-size, so that the mattresses loom over the viewer, the title invoking a feeling of longing for the children who slept on these beds. Elsewhere, a haunting and eerie image of washing hung out on washing lines is titled The Weeping Lines. The final image in the show – Weeping Walls III – depicts a patterned wall with what at first appears to be a bullet hole piercing its surface; on closer inspection this is a nail, on which a portrait used to hang. Sami’s creation of anthropomorphic forms evokes a sense of the surreal and a strong feeling of loss. He furthers this with a confident application of scale: objects are piled up or gathered in great numbers suggesting a sense of the immeasurable loss of life and memories, and the enormity of the time that’s passed.
Even political figures are missing: a podium stands unoccupied; the parliament sits bare. The absence of leaders strikes as a comment on the deadly consequences of empty leadership: conflict and destruction. Indeed, the depiction of the seats in the parliament room – rows of white oblongs – evokes tombstones in a cemetery. The only figures that are depicted are two portraits hung on walls –one likely of Hussein – yet each have their faces disfigured by shadow; they are decapitated by darkness. This seems like a further revolt against their leadership, a moment of quiet iconoclasm.
What is also missing are explicit depictions of violence and war, instead replaced with images of their impacts and destruction. Sami has described his interest in Arabic poetry and poetic devices, in particular Tawriya, a ‘rhetorical device that involves playing upon words that are similar in form but different in meaning. Tawriya comes from the Arabic finite verb warra: hiding something by showing something else.’ In Ashfall I, a cityscape is foregrounded with a scattering of black and white splodges of paint: the ash left floating after a fire or explosion. Sami’s exploration of scenes that obscure the violence itself, but instead offer moments of calm and reflection in its aftermath, is incredibly moving.
Sami uses brushes, palette knives and spray cans to apply paint to his canvases. His application is sometimes thick and heavy, and elsewhere scratchy and sparse, often creating a distorting sense of depth or shallowness. One is drawn to the surface of his images to inspect the layers of paint. This too evokes the mining of one’s memory; it is as if the image appears before your eye, or on the surface of the canvas, momentarily, like a memory that resurfaces. Sami’s use of spray paint to create squiggly, spiderly forms is suggestive of graffiti scrawled onto the walls of a derelict building - teenagers making images in protest, in the hope of being seen, to form an identity. Sami’s graffiti are images writ onto the surface of the past to try and understand it. Indeed, time and place are murky in Sami’s work: everything feels flipped on its head. The absence of figures, movement and details of life creates an uneasy sense of indeterminate location and timelessness. His choice of colours too – often sickly or seemingly unnatural – make the images appear as if viewed through a distorted lens: a foggy mind. These are the images of a mind remembering.
The exploration of memories and images of war feels more poignant in considering the way that the Gulf Wars (1991-2011) – through which Sami will have grown-up – were experienced through new visual technology. The Gulf Wars took place in a technologically advanced society, with a 24-hour news cycle, the Internet, and new media and military technologies; their onset in 1991 was the first time the start of a war was televised. Sami’s paintings work against the visual material that remains of these conflicts: in obscuring the violence, and re-focussing on the domestic and mundane, he offers more personal, emotive, and reflective evidencing of said Wars.
Some of the paintings here feel less developed: too lacking in detail, too flat or weak in composition. However, most of Sami’s images have a real haunting magnetism and make for fascinating viewing. One does leave reflecting on the real and lasting impacts of violent conflict.
Mohammed Sami: The Point 0 is showing at Camden Art Centre until 28th May 2023.
Make sure to collect your Yamos on the gowithYamo app when you visit!
