Mohammed Kazem Directions – Artist Talk

6 July 2023

Mohammed Kazem · Directions

On the occasion of the opening celebrations at the Ludwigmuseum in the Deutschherrenhaus in Koblenz in honor of the exhibition opening of Emirati conceptual artist Mohammed Kazem’s first solo museum exhibition entitled Directions our volunteer Dilek Topal traveled to the Deutsches Eck to ask the artist a few questions about his art in general and the works and concepts behind the new exhibition in particular.

Mohammed Kazem, who has been a friend of the gallerist and art historian Dr. Dorothea van der Koelen for decades and has been present at the gallery’s exhibitions and fair presentations for just as long, took time for our questions and let us record the interview in original sound for our video of the week, which we would like to warmly recommend to all those interested in art. The extremely interesting artist talk is supplemented by an introduction and commentary by Dr. Dorothea van der Koelen. In her opening speech for the exhibition Mohammed Kazem · Directions, the director of the Ludwigmuseum, Dr. Beate Reifenscheid, sums up the artistic work of the imaginative Emirati as follows:

One of the most prominent artists of the Emirate of Dubai, Mohammed Kazem, is a contemporary witness of this enormous change and at the same time its chronicler. He traces these changes with subtle means, commenting on them solely through his conceptual actions on site. The chronology of those events, which he has been dealing with since the mid-1990s, make this clear.

I am from Dubai, and I used to know the place by heart, but now I am often lost and confused in my own city. The changes and developments in the UAE have happened so fast since the UAE was founded in 1971. If you compare the Photographs with Flags taken in 1997 and the ones from 2003, you can see this rapid change. These areas were empty, and now there are streets and shops, the cities are developing vertically and horizontally into the desert. One of the flags is even where the Sharjah Biennial is taking place. With this series I wanted to remind people to look back to the past, then to look at the present time to see forward to the future./p>

Mohammed Kazem