We sat down with Mohammed Kazem to discuss what creating means to him. He spoke to us about his early training, his relationship with his friend and mentor, Hassan Sharif, and the way some of his most iconic works developed.
Mohammed Kazem has developed an artistic practice that encompasses video, photography and performance to find new ways of apprehending his environment and experiences. The foundations of his work are informed by his training as a musician, and Kazem is deeply engaged with developing processes that can render transient phenomena, such as sound and light, in tangible terms. Often positioning himself within his work, the artist responds to geographical location, materiality and the elements as a means to assert his subjectivity, particularly in relation to the rapid pace of modernisation in the Emirates since the country’s founding.
Kazem was a member of the Emirates Fine Arts Society early in his career and is acknowledged as one of the ‘Five’, an informal group of Emirati artists at the vanguard of conceptual and interdisciplinary art practice.
