Meditation Room

Like many of Mohammed Sami’s works, Meditation Room presents the viewer with what appears to be a domestic interior animated by a sense of mystery and dread. "You sense something but you’re not able to name it," says the artist. The head-on perspective, proscenium-like space, and dramatic lighting lend the work a theatrical or dream-like sensibility, as does the implied possibility of someone or something present on the other side of the door. The door is cracked open, allowing a sliver of bright, yellow light to fall across the floor and nearby wall, illuminating motes of dust suspended in the air. A vivid, blue-green carpet occupies the foreground. Instead of lying flat on the ground, it bunches and buckles near the base of the door, suggesting that the room was recently the scene of a struggle or violent disturbance. At the upper righthand corner, a photo or poster of an unidentified man in military fatigues and a beret may locate the setting within Sami’s home country of Iraq, where the artist was recruited as a child to produce propagandistic images supporting the ruling Ba‘athist regime due to his exceptional artistic talent.