Iraqi artist Mohammed Sami’s conflict paintings on show as Turner Prize shortlist exhibition unveiled

Baghdad-born painter's work contains 'hints and references to conflict in Iraq'

A visitor views work by Mohammed Sami at an exhibition for the Turner Prize 2025 at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery in Bradford, northern England. PA

An exhibition of works by the four artists who have been shortlisted for this year’s Turner Prize has been unveiled in Bradford, the 2025 UK City of Culture.

The four shortlisted artists are Nnena Kalu, Rene Matic, Mohammed Sami and Zadie Xa, with the winner due to be announced in December in the northern English city.

The exhibition at Bradford’s Cartwright Hall Art Gallery is free to visit and is open to the public from Saturday until February 22.

Sami was born in Baghdad, Iraq, and lives and works in London.

His paintings focus on landscapes, interiors and still lifes, displacing direct representations of war and conflict.

For his Turner Prize presentation, Sami brings together new paintings that “explore the symptoms of war through processes of memory and causality”.

Sami was shortlisted for After the Storm: Mohammed Sami at Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, which has 14 paintings that respond to the history of Sir Winston Churchill’s birthplace, and contain “hints and references to conflict in Iraq”.

Works from After the Storm by artist Mohammed Sami, which has been shortlisted for the Turner Prize. PA

The paintings do not have human figures while one shows the “shadow of a helicopter blade over a table and empty chairs”, and another appears to suggest body bags.

Xa is a Korean-Canadian artist who also lives and works in London. She creates immersive installations that imagine alternative worlds.

Xa, who studied at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver and the Royal College of Art in London, is influenced by her Korean background and its “spiritual rituals, shamanism, folk traditions and textile practices”.

She is nominated for Moonlit Confessions Across Deep Sea Echoes: Your Ancestors Are Whales, and Earth Remembers Everything (2025), which was created with Spanish artist Benito Mayor Vallejo and presented at the 2025 Sharjah Biennial.

It has a sound element inspired by Salpuri, a Korean exorcism dance, and a mobile sculpture inspired by seashell wind chimes and Korean shamanic rattles, which has 650 brass bells that make harmonised sounds.

Scottish artist Kalu is known for her large-scale abstract drawings and hanging sculptures.

Her vividly-coloured works are created from repeated lines and wrappings of different materials, making nest or cocoon-like forms.

She is a resident artist at ActionSpace’s studio, which supports learning disabled artists across London, at Studio Voltaire.

Work by nominated artist Zadie Xa. PA

Kalu is nominated for her installation Hanging Sculpture 1-10, which Manifesta 15 Barcelona commissioned her to create at a disused power station, and her presentation in Conversations, a group exhibition at Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.

The works contain 10 large brightly-coloured sculptures that hung among the grey concrete pillars of the industrial site and a work in pen, graphite and chalk pen on two pieces of paper.

She was commended for “her unique command of material, colour and gesture, and her highly-attuned responses to architectural space”.

Matic, who was born in Peterborough, eastern England, uses photography along with sculpture, textiles, sound, moving image and writing to reflect on identity, community and love.

They were nominated for the solo exhibition As Opposed To The Truth at CCA Berlin.

Matic was praised by the jury when shortlisted for expressing “concerns around belonging and identity, conveying broader experiences of a young generation and their community through an intimate and compelling body of work”.

The winner of the Turner Prize will be announced on December 9 at an awards ceremony at Bradford Grammar School.