The exhibition, ‘After the Storm’, will take place between Tuesday 9th July – Sunday 20th October 2024, and will mark a decade of Blenheim Art Foundation’s award-winning programme of contemporary art.

Through exploring retroactive memories, his paintings capture a world shaped not just by the weight of the past but also the present, creating scenarios that are often left to the viewer to interpret through the lens of their own experiences.

As Sami has previously written ‘painting becomes the only medium to grasp what is not there in painting anymore’.

Sami’s paintings feature landscapes, interiors and more abstracted scenes, whilst always being devoid of the human figure. They blur the line between reality and artifice, conjuring the disquieting sensation of both presence and absence.

Blenheim Palace, a gift from Queen Anne to the First Duke of Marlborough in recognition of his triumph at the Battle of Blenheim in 1704 and later the birthplace of wartime prime minister Winston Churchill, stands as an architectural testament to military glory. Placed within the context of Blenheim Palace and its world-renowend collection of portraiture and narrative artworks, Sami’s enigmatic paintings challenge viewers to reconsider the didactic nature of these traditional genres.

Michael Frahm, Director of Blenheim Art Foundation said, ‘We are thrilled to bring the exceptional work of Mohammed Sami to Blenheim Palace for his major solo exhibition. Sami’s unique visual language, which merges the personal and historical, the fragmented and the surreal, is set to engage audiences in a profound dialogue with thee Palace’s storied past and its impressive art collection. This exhibition not only celebrates a decade of contemporary art within our walls but also reaffirms our commitment to showcasing groundbreaking artists whose work resonates with the times and places they inhabit’.

About Mohammed Sami

Mohammed Sami was born in Baghdad in 1984, later immigrating to Sweden in 2007 and now lives and works in London. In 2023, Sami’s work was the subject of a solo exhibition at Camden Art Centre, London, his first solo institutional exhibition in the UK, which toured to De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea.

He has participated in group exhibitions at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2022); Aichi Triennale (2022); the Whitechapel Gallery, London (2022); the Hayward Gallery, London (2021); and Towner Eastbourne (2020) and his paintings are held in many notable places such as the Tate, London; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and Moderna Museet, Stockholm.