ART CITIES:Kassel-Mohammed Sami

In his institutional exhibition “Hostless”, Mohammed Sami presents a haunting body of work that negotiates the fragility of memory and the lingering aftermath of conflict. Absent of human figures, Sami’s paintings turn toward domestic settings and quotidian environments, animating empty spaces with the palpable trace of human existence. Rather than offering explicit depictions of trauma or the overt iconography of war, the artist mines personal recollections from his formative years in Iraq and his subsequent migration to Sweden. Through an embrace of ambiguity and formal restraint, his compositions function as cryptic vignettes—excavated scenes where personal history dissolves into a universal, hauntingly familiar terrain.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Fridericianum archive

Central to the exhibition “Hostless” is Mohammed Sami’s focus on internal spaces, which transform canvas surfaces into spectral containers holding the residue of unuttered events. Rooms become psychological sites where abstraction falters, allowing a subtle unease to seep through the architectural threshold. Sami harnesses a rich repertoire of mark-making techniques, utilizing multi-textured paint, semi-abstract registers, and deliberately blurred forms that appear to dissolve or drift across the canvas. These visual disruptions mimic the slippage and decay of memory itself, rendering objects as floating signifiers that denote absent violence without ever explicitly performing it. Violence is not staged as a spectacle; instead, it is quietly endured through the stubborn materiality of what remains.

By approaching painting as an allegorical space, Sami subtly reconfigures traditional genres—including still life, landscape, and architectural interiors—infusing them with an uncanny, ominous twist. Mundane items and domestic fixtures, triggered by everyday encounters in his post-immigration life, acquire a mute, threatening presence that feels simultaneously playful and deeply disquieting. By refusing the sensationalism of conflict photography and stereotypical representations of war, Sami constructs a nuanced relationship between an original traumatic event and its present, oblique recollection. Hostless ultimately operates as a meditation on emotional resonance through distance, demonstrating how the truest weight of loss is often borne by the silent, ordinary structures left behind.

Photo: Mohammed Sami: Death of Wall (Detail), 2025, Photo: Modern Art
© Mohammed Sami, Courtesy der Künstler / the artist; Modern Art, London & Paris; Luhring Augustine, New York

Info: Fridericianum, Friedrichsplatz 18, Kassel, Germany, Duration: 3/10/2026-3/1/2027, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-Sun 11:00-18:00, Thu 11:00-20:00, https://fridericianum.org/