“Hostless” at the Fridericianum: Mohammed Sami opens his first institutional exhibition in Germany

The Fridericianum in Kassel, the historic venue that hosts documenta every five years, has opened its doors to the first institutional exhibition in Germany of Iraqi-British painter Mohammed Sami. Titled “Hostless”, as e-flux announces, the exhibition is open to the public from 3 October 2026 to 3 January 2027 (the formal opening was held on 2 October) and presents a new series of the artist’s paintings, created especially for this occasion.

In this new series, Sami focuses mainly on interior spaces. The paintings become the site of memory processes — mental operations where abstraction wavers and something unsettling begins to seep through. Rooms turn into “ghost vessels”, holding the remains of events that agreed to remain unnamed. According to the curatorial description, objects behave as floating signs pointing to an absent violence or a memory that becomes consumable only from a distance, while “horror” remains an optional element for the viewer — not performed, but endured in silence, through the stubborn materiality of what remains.

The exhibition is realised in collaboration with the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (S.M.A.K.) in Ghent and Moderna Museet Malmö, where the artist’s work will be presented in 2027 and 2028. On the occasion of the exhibition, the Fridericianum will also publish a monograph on the artist. The curatorial team consists of Justin Michael Delor, Luise von Nobbe and Moritz Wesseler.

Sami (born in Baghdad in 1984, lives and works in London) is one of the most discussed painters of his generation. After solo exhibitions at KM21 in The Hague and the Douglas Hyde Gallery in Dublin (2025), the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin and the Blenheim Art Foundation (2024), for which he was nominated for the 2025 Turner Prize, the exhibition at the Fridericianum comes as an important institutional step. His works are held in international collections such as Tate in London, the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Art Institute of Chicago. The Fridericianum realises the exhibition with the support of The Nixon Foundation, AMA Collection and The Garcia Family Foundation.