Returning memories masquerade in light and shadow, and windows, or in some everyday object. They don’t reveal themselves easily, and this is what makes them interesting. 
—Mohammed Sami 

Writing Art introduces a new series of events exploring recent works in the Astrup Fearnley Collection through the practice of ekphrasis. In collaboration with poet Ibrahim Nasser, Head of Education Marie Vallestad will guide participants through selected artworks and creative writing sessions. Audiences are invited to experience the artworks through their own poetic interpretations. 

In the third writing workshop, we turn to the painting Yesterday on Shelves (2023) by Mohammed Sami (b. 1984, Baghdad, Iraq). Sami’s artistic practice revolves around episodic memory – the recollection of personal experiences and individual events. Having fled Iraq in 2007, his paintings explore belated memories as they suddenly and unexpectedly resurface through everyday objects or sensory impressions. Drawing on the traditional use of metaphor and euphemism in Arabic literature, his works articulate war, loss, and exile in an indirect way, often through depicting seemingly ordinary objects. 

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