Mohammed Kazem

A pioneering conceptual artist, influenced by his close friend and mentor Hassan Sharif, Mohammed Kazem’s work touches on current global transformations in the social, political, and natural environments, and explores abstract ideas about the body, movement, space, and the natural elements. Kazem often works on simultaneous projects over extended periods of time, observing the transformations of his surroundings and the effects of time. In his photographic series Photographs with Flags, Kazem photographs himself next to flags in the desert that mark imminent construction projects, the artist’s body and physical presence bearing witness to the social and environmental change about to occur.

Similarly, Kazem’s Window series documented the construction of a high-rise building from his window over the course of two years, as it slowly began to block his view and even the sky. Even within his iconic scratch paintings, time, space, and the body are all present. Since 1990 Kazem has been scratching the surface of paper in varying abstract compositions, capturing and incorporating sound, light and movement embodied on the page, which also changes and is dependent on the changing light of its surroundings.

In addition to showing at the 2013 Venice Biennale, where he represented the United Arab Emirates, Kazem’s work has been prominently featured at venues around the world, including several Sharjah Biennials, the 2006 Singapore Biennial, the 2000 Havana Biennial, the 2002 Dhaka Biennial, and most recently at the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, in the major survey, Arab Express. 

Courtesy of Taymour Grahne Gallery