Mohammed Kazem

A leading figure in the  UAE’s ‘Second Generation’ of contemporary artists, Mohammed Kazem has developed an artistic practice that encompasess video, photography, and performance to find new ways of understanding his environment and experience.  Portraying the fleeting quotidian, Windows (2019-2020) and Neighbours (2018) are series of works that weave a short-story-like narrative through successions of everyday scenes across the UAE. Invisible and intimate events in the landscape—laundry day at a labour compound, workers resting, clothes billowing—are witnessed by shadowy, retreating figures, reduced to mere traces.  He has exhibited widely in the UAE and internationally, and in 2013, represented the UAE’s National Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. His works are collected by museums worldwide, including the British Museum, London; and the Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi and New York.  Kazem completed his Master’s degree in Fine Art at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia in 2012.