Mohammed Sami was born in Baghdad in 1984, a time when Saddam Hussein had an iron grip on the city. In 2005, when Sami graduated from the Institute of Fine Arts, the country was at war. Though he was granted asylum in Sweden two years later, Sami’s poignant paintings draw from dark memories. He often shows empty rooms, or spaces that are inked with eerie shadows and other unsettling traces of human presence. His first U.K. solo show presents a new series of paintings. Sami’s claustrophobic cityscapes bring to mind destruction and the gaping crevices of memory. —Elena Clavarino