SCENES FROM THE 90s: Artist Room: Mohammed Kazem
This exhibition brings together a rare group of early works on paper by Mohammed Kazem, dating from the 1990s, a formative period in the career of an artist whose practice has contributed significantly to the development of contemporary art in the United Arab Emirates. Produced at a moment of intense experimentation, these works reveal the emergence of concerns that continue to resonate throughout Kazem’s oeuvre: observation, repetition, materiality, and an enduring fascination with the traces through which we experience the world.
Kazem’s artistic journey was profoundly shaped by his encounter with Hassan Sharif, the pioneering conceptual artist who became his mentor after the young Kazem left school at the age of fourteen. Through Sharif, he was introduced to a mode of artistic inquiry rooted in experimentation, critical observation, and the questioning of conventions. This formative relationship encouraged him to look beyond representation and toward a practice grounded in process, perception, and the possibilities of ordinary materials.
