Mohammed Sami – 'There's beauty in the question' | Turner Prize 2025 | Tate
Mohammed Sami, Meditation Room, 2022
Mixed media on linen, 110 1/4 x 90 1/2 in. (280 x 230 cm)
Mohammed Sami’s poignant and evocative paintings are an exploration of memory and its vulnerability to time. Absent of people, the settings and quotidian objects in his works are nevertheless permeated with the trace of human presence; while evidence of turmoil or trauma is never directly referenced, obscure and haunting narratives are conveyed. Sami mines personal experiences from his formative years in Iraq to ground his work, but by embracing ambiguity, he creates a sense of universal familiarity. Negotiating the past through painting, he harnesses the metaphorical potential of different mark-making techniques to interrupt a straightforward narrative reading. Blurred objects often appear as if they are coming apart or moving across the canvas itself, suggesting gaps or slippage of memory. Sami’s compositions unfurl as cryptic vignettes of fragmented scenes, excavated from the past.
Mohammed Sami, The Point 0, 2020
Acrylic on cotton, 23 1/4 x 27 3/8 in. (59 x 69.5 cm)
Sami was born in Baghdad, Iraq in 1984, and he currently lives and works in London, UK. He received a BA from Ulster University-Belfast School of Art, Northern Ireland in 2016 and an MFA at Goldsmiths College, London in 2018. Recent large-scale solo exhibitions of Sami’s work include Fire Exit at KM21, The Hague (2025), and To Whom It May Concern at the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2025). Sami was nominated for the Turner Prize 2025 for his solo show, After the Storm, which was on view at Blenheim Palace, Woodstock, UK in 2024. Other important recent solo exhibitions of his have been held at Fondazione Sandretto re Rebaudengo, Turin (2024); Camden Art Centre, London (2023); De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea (2023); Luhring Augustine, New York (2023); and Modern Art, London (2022). His work will be featured in a major group exhibition, House of Nisaba, opening at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm in May 2026. Other recent significant group shows include Le monde comme il va / The World As It Goes, Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection, Paris (2024); the 58th Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2022-23); The London Open 2022, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2022); Aichi Triennale, Aichi Arts Center, Nagoya (2022); Mixing It Up: Painting Today, Hayward Gallery, London (2021); Stilla liv (Still life), Gallery Magnus Karlsson, Gotland, Sweden (2021); and The Sea is the Limit, York Art Gallery, UK and Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts, Doha, Qatar (2018-19). Sami’s work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Detroit Institute of Art, MI; Des Moines Art Center, IA; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; Boijmans van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Tate, London, UK; Arts Council Collection, London, UK; The Government Art Collection, London, UK; York Art Gallery, York, UK; The Iraqi Ministry of Culture, Baghdad, Iraq; and the Collection Carmignac, Paris, France.
Mohammed Sami – 'There's beauty in the question' | Turner Prize 2025 | Tate
After the Storm: Mohammed Sami at Blenheim Palace
For more information, please contact Donald Johnson Montenegro at donald@luhringaugustine.com.
