Mohammed Sami - The Point 0
I saw this show three times. Not just because it’s that good (it is) but because it’s unsettling and I wanted to understand why. Mohammed Sami was born in Baghdad in 1984 and lived in Iraq until granted asylum by Sweden in 2007. For him, the two Gulf wars bookended what are typically the most formative years of anyone’s life. I watched those wars from a distance, snippets of scud missiles and anti-Saddam sentiments registered in my mind as something bad happening abroad. Then I’d go back to my blissfully ignorant Western teenage lifestyle. Sami lived through them, and his belated memories are the driving force for his work.
At 2.8 metres high x 5.5 metres wide, ‘One Thousand and One Nights’ (2022) is one of the largest works in the show. It is a painfully beautiful night time sky, with a low horizon that forces your gaze upward towards eerie, green glowing clouds. Tracers and rockets light up the sky like fireworks. An explosion in the distance is reflected in a lake. You have to stand back to take it all in, and it’s impact on me was immediate: instantly teleporting me back to watching live television footage from the first Gulf War. That was an impressionable experience for American teenagers like myself, who at that point thought wars were something that had been relegated to the history books. But what I found most haunting about the image was the realisation that Sami would have repeatedly seen that nighttime view through his own eyes.
A lot has been written about how Sami paints his memories, but memories are selective and fallible which is something the artist has acknowledged. His intention isn’t to depict historical accuracy, but to exorcise his own historical horror. Shadows loom large, appearing like oversized spiders. Though frequently framed in a domestic setting, wilted plants are often the only signs of life. Human figures, if they exist at all, are usually redacted faces on paintings within the painting. Maybe that’s for the best. I can’t imagine anyone who would want to inhabit these canvasses.
‘Podium’ is one of the rare works that depicts exactly what it says on the tin, but it took until my third view to realise it wasn’t a coffin. A colourful cluster of plastic hangers appears to harbour Wednesday Addams’ wardrobe, but it’s much less amusing once you decipher the title. Those hangers are holding clothes for an Islamic day of mourning. The black keys dangling from the external lock of ‘The Praying Room’ door is all the indication you need that if you were to find yourself inside, your prayers might be your last. Chairs look like headstones. Sandbags drip like leaky bags of blood. Ashes fall from the sky while a city burns in the background. The more I absorb Sami’s work, the more I absorb the unease of his haunted memories. So I kept returning back to gaze at that gorgeous green sky in ‘One Thousand and One Nights’.
Because yes, it is unapogetically gorgeous. Horrific things are not bereft of beauty. Maybe that is why they persist. A young woman posed smiling for a photo in front of that painting at the opening night. She appeared too young to have known first-hand, if at all, just exactly what it was that she was smiling in front of. Maybe she interpreted the title as a reference to Aladdin instead of the insidious wars that raged for decades. Sami intentionally has fun with his words and his titles, so I suspect he wouldn’t mind if some viewers choose to see the beauty in his works rather than dwell over the darkness. In this show, there is plenty of both.
Plan your visit
At Camden Art Centre (@CamdenArtCentre) until 28 May
Visit mohammedsami.com and follow @mohammedsamistudio on Instagram for more info about the artist