Mohammed Kazem (b. 1969, Dubai, UAE) is a pioneer of contemporary Emirati art who creates conceptual explorations of the environment through works on paper, video, photography and installation. Kazem’s works synthesise the continuously evolving and shifting debates about modernity and the status of citizens within and outside their nation-states. Kazem was a member of the Emirates Fine Arts Society early in his career and was acknowledged as one of the ‘Five’, (including Hassan Sharif, Mohammed Ahmed Ibrahim, Hussain Sharif and Abdullah Al Saadi) an informal group of Emirati artists who represented a vanguard of conceptual and interdisciplinary art.
Kazem studied painting at Emirates Fine Art Society, Sharjah, U.A.E. (1984 – 1987), and in 2012 earned an MFA in Sculpture from The University of the Arts, Philadelphia University. Kazem participated in formative international group exhibitions including Emirates Arts, Sittard Art Center, Netherlands (1995), 5 UAE, Ludwig Forum for International Art, Aachen, Germany (2002) and Numbers–Time–Signs, Dorothea van der Koelen Gallery, Mainz, Germany (2003) and Arab Express, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2012). His works can be found in a number of institutional and private collections, including Arab Museum of Modern Art, (Qatar), Sharjah Art Museum (Sharjah), Barjeel Art Foundation (Sharjah), Sittard Art Center (Netherlands), JP Morgan Chase Collection (USA), Deutsche Bank Collection (Germany).
Mohammed Kazem will develop a new and monumental work in his Directions series, which turns intangible elements like light and sound into tangible objects. Tracking the direction and movement of natural light by looking closely at their sources and defining their relationship to the space it inhabits and the time of day, these changes in time and space will be translated into a multimedia installation and sculpture that exists both inside and outside The Watermill Center.