Family Issues / Family Issues II, Mohammed Sami, 2019/2020
The contemporary media has repeatedly focused its attention on the stark imagery of suffering and violence coming from the Middle East, exploiting affective triggers as blunt instruments to engender fear within the viewers – even for a brief time – and detract attention.
As a first-hand witness to these conflicts and having migrated from my homeland, Iraq, to Sweden in 2007, in my artworks I aim at underlining the psychological aspect of immigration. By examining the belated memories triggered by common everyday objects, the traditional categories of painting such as still-life, internal-external spaces, and landscapes turn into strange threats in my artworks.
These collections and ongoing series want to challenge the typical image of suffering and to provide a symptomatic perspective of war and its effects through a slow and personal reading, evoking a widespread sense of loss and conflicts that inhabit cultures collectively.
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