Mohammed Sami: "Isthmus"

Mohammed Sami's solo exhibition, Isthmus, is on view at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, Italy through October 13, 2024.

In Sami's works, gathered under the title Isthmus, the human presence disappears but lingers on the canvas in the form of a trace and a poignant memory. Isthmus invokes the concept of “isthmus” (البَرزَخ); a place that separates two things. In Arabic, this idea is encapsulated in the term “Barzakh," which denotes the separation between the living and what comes after it, a concept similar to the Christian notion of purgatory. In tracing the meaning of this word and its resonances, Sami’s title suggests the unsettling atmosphere of being in-between, left hanging, or in limbo. In these new works, Sami’s brushwork expands to make use of everyday materials mixed into the paint, such as sand and spray paint, adding a further complexity to his painterly vocabulary. Compositionally, too, his new works evoke an unsettled and fragmentary state of mind: viewpoints seem either too close – showing only detail and no depth of field – or obscured through shadow – large sections of the canvas blacked out – leaving one with a disturbing sense of being somewhere in-between; not quite here nor there.⁠

To learn more about the exhibition, please visit the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo website.