NSFW presents "Nature Mortelle" by Syrian multidisciplinary artist Alqumit Alhamad.
"Nature Mortelle" brings together installation and watercolor works to explore the dissonance between serenity and violence. By reinterpreting the still-life genre, the exhibition contrasts familiar, tranquil compositions with elements that challenge perceptions of comfort and normalcy. Traditionally a space for celebrating abundance and beauty, still life is here used to examine the subtle, often overlooked presence of conflict in everyday life.
"A feast laid out for consumption, except there is nothing to eat. The table is set, the composition familiar, echoing the rich tradition of 17th-century Dutch still-life paintings. But instead of drinks, fish, and bread, there are guns, bullets, and grenades. This installation replaces symbols of abundance with instruments of destruction, confronting viewers with the unsettling reality of war. The still-life genre, once a celebration of wealth and luxury, becomes a site of violence and absence. The calm, composed arrangement contrasts sharply with the brutal implications of its contents, forcing a reckoning with how war is perceived, framed, and consumed, particularly in the West." -Alqumit Alhamad
*Nature Mortelle (a play on "Nature Morte", French for still life, “Dead Nature”)
*The exhibition marks the first chapter of a curatorial collaboration between Alqumit Alhamad and Raghad Resres, centered on the theme of Diasporic Consciousness.
Photos by Hendrik Zeitler.
Alqumit Alhamad (b. 1992, Jerash, Jordan) is a Syrian multidisciplinary artist. He earned an MFA in Fine Arts from HDK-Valand in Gothenburg (2024), a diploma in Visual Communication from Östra Grevie Folkhögskola (2022), and a BFA in Graphic Design and Animation from the Aleppo University of Fine and Applied Arts (2014).
Based in Gothenburg, he has exhibited widely in Sweden and internationally, including in the UK, Germany, the USA, Finland, and Syria.
Alqumit Alhamad’s project War Trauma won Ung Svensk Form 2025, and he was awarded Postnord’s postage stamp sketch assignment as well as the Vera and Göran Agnekil Prize for Young Artists from the Swedish Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm. He was nominated for the Bror Hjorth Prize for Young Illustrators in Uppsala, Sweden, in 2024, and for the Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf’s Young Leader Scholarship in Malmö, Sweden, in 2018. He also received the Al-Basel Prize from Aleppo University, Syria, in 2014.
His artistic practice is rooted in his experiences of displacement and revolves around self-affirmation, self-destruction, self-invention, and self-reference. These concepts reflect his ongoing journey of navigating cultural dislocation and reconstructing Identity