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Hot new artist: Mohammed Sami, painter of a fractured world
Who are the hot new artists to follow this season? And who are the collectors’ favorites? As the 56th edition of the Art Basel fair is taking place this week, Numéro art has invited six leading figures from the art world to share their latest favourites. Today, focus on painter Mohammed Sami, art curator and advisor Eve Thérond’s favorite.
By Anya Harrison.
Published on 19 June 2025. Updated on 7 July 2025.
Mohammed Sami, a painter who translates war traumas
A painter of allegories, Mohammed Sami gives shape to memories of war and trauma. Born in Baghdad in 1984, he studied fine art and spent two years working for the Iraqi Ministry of Culture before leaving the country for Sweden and then London.
Though autobiographical – he draws on his own experiences to recapture images of the Iraq war – his large-format compositions are disconcerting in their deliberate refusal to facilitate any linear reading. With his close-ups that often seem too close, and his framing that prevents an understanding of the full perspective, he creates the impression of a state of mind shattered into a thousand fragments. With titles such as Massacre (2023), Hiroshima Mon Amour (2024), or Podium (2022), he gives the viewer a certain amount of direction without revealing everything.
A harrowing meditation on the ravages of armed conflict
The curator and art adviser Eve Thérond speaks of “melancholy and edification” when contemplating his paintings, which she discovered in 2022 at Modern Art in London. “Devoid of any human presence, his cryptic interiors – the ghosts of forgotten pasts – speak to me in whispers.” His oeuvre, she says, “is a poignant, visceral meditation on the ravages of war, exile, and the erosion of memory. In a world shaped by displacement and erasure, it’s a silent but urgent witness statement.”
While Sami initially found an audience in major British institutions such as the Whitechapel Gallery (2022), the Hayward Gallery (2021), and the Liverpool Biennial (2018), he has now acquired a prominent place at international events such as the 58th Carnegie International in Pittsburgh (2022) and a group exhibition at the Bourse de commerce (2024).
Mohammed Sami is represented by the Modern Art gallery.
Some of the artist’s artworks are currently exhibited on the gallery’s stand at the Art Basel fair (Stand K18), from June 17th to 22nd, 2025, Messe Basel, Basel.
