Mohammed Sami

Mohammed: The power of the painting lies in evoking the presence of what is not shown. When you look at lightning you expect the thunder, and when you hear the thunder, you expect the lightning. What I depict on the paintings is the sound of the thunder, but no lightning at all

So, you are the person who's going to imagine, ‘Is this a sound of bombs, or a sound of thunder?’

When it comes to painting, there is a beauty in making the question, so why should I have to answer?

Preparing the canvas, it's inseparable from making the painting. You know, I would exaggerate if I say, ‘I prepare each linen as a father prepare his son for the first day in the school.’

All the canvases need to be done by myself, because when this painting will move to a museum, I will remember everything about this work, even the small scratch in my finger.

I am extremely emotionally fragile to build up a new collection in my studio. You have to face these white canvases. It's like a death penalty awaiting you.

In order to avoid the studio for a few hours in the morning, there are some ritual steps I do for myself. I wake up at 4:30 to go for a run, go for a long walk, sit down in coffee shops. I look at the silliest things ever, just to digest ideas.

The artist's mindset is to hunt or to be hunted by these triggers.

Sometimes the window in my studio trigger a scenario. There is net on the window. The window was broke, and yet the net on the window, it seems like holding the cloud, but give me a clue that the net is holding the clouds. There's no clue. This is your sensation.

It’s conjunctions of experience passed on your own memory. It's accumulation of repetitive events you have seen it over and over and over again, and then it stopped here, in this painting.

Empty spaces, internal spaces, external spaces, the everyday objects, the light and shadow – they act on the behalf of the human presence in order to convey what is not there. The absence in artworks allow wider room for the audience to engage with the artwork. To raise questions.

I believe in the power of a question more than the answer.

There will be absolutely no conclusion in the artworks. But at the same time, never denying the artist’s experience.

Of course, you know, I'm from Iraq. You know, there is an emotional connection with these spaces, but the memories refuse to define itself in the painting, because it may turn to a report of war, politics, and then the paintings are going to serve ideology rather than serving a purpose of art.

The Western audience, they have already impression about my homeland.

That's why they anticipate to see violence in my work. But there's no tangible violence. I take advantage from the collective memory.

The powerful work, in my opinion, is the one that, when you look at the painting, you think about something else. The paintings became a mirror for the audience’s perceptions. And that's why the paintings need to be timeless.