Skin III

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, Whitehall

Artist Mohammed Sami is interested in episodic memory, the way an individual processes everyday events from the past. He says: ‘An individual might encounter a failure of recollection. The length of time since the incident plays a significant role in this, resulting in a distortion of some visual forms when they present themselves at different times or locations.’ The painting Skin III depicts a ‘transmission in conflict’, in the artist’s words, in which the practice of painting itself has the power to define this type of memory, without referencing the conflict itself. The viewer can sense the threat in the title of the work, the treatment of the subject, and the working of the paint itself. ‘Skin’ is an ongoing series that grows and stretches according to the degree of detachment between the artist and the events that he has experienced in his homeland, Iraq.

Born in Baghdad, Iraq, in 1984, Mohammed Sami now lives and works in London. Having completed studies in drawing and painting at the Institute of Fine Arts, Baghdad, he worked at the Ministry of Culture, Baghdad, before being granted asylum in Sweden in 2007. Sami graduated from Belfast School of Art in 2015, and earned an MFA at Goldsmiths’ College in 2018. Sami has his first institutional solo show in the UK at Camden Art Centre, London, in 2023 (touring to De La Warr Pavilion). His work has previously featured in numerous group exhibitions, including The London Open 2022 at Whitechapel Gallery, London (2022); Mixing It Up: Painting Today at Hayward Gallery, London (2021); Stilla Liv / Still Life, Galleri Magnus Karlsson, Gotland, Sweden (2020); Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts, Doha, Qatar (2018–19) and The Sea is the Limit, York Art Gallery, UK (2018); as well as The Culture Night of Norrköping City, Norrköping Art Museum, Sweden (2011). His paintings are held by a number of major collections, including the Arts Council Collection, London; Museum Bojmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Imperial War Museum, London; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; and Tate, London.

Places

Subjects

blood, domestic interior, carpet

Materials & Techniques

Artist

Mohammed Sami (1984 - )

Title

Skin III

Date

2020

Medium

acrylic on linen

Dimensions

height: 225.0 cm; width: 285.0 cm; depth: 6.0 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from VO Curations, August 2021

Provenance

The artist via VO Curations; from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection, 2 August 2021

GAC number

19017