ABOUT
Amjad Hashem is a visual artist based in Amsterdam. (b.1982) He graduated from Damascus University in 2007 and works primarily with acrylic painting, alongside installation and archival research.
His practice explores identity, memory, displacement, and the psychological aftermath of conflict. Drawing from personal experience and collective histories, Hashem creates dreamlike scenes where figures, animals, damaged interiors, and displaced objects occupy uncertain spaces. Each composition holds traces of departure, survival, loss, and reinvention.
Hashem builds his paintings through thin washes, layered surfaces, scratched lines, and muted colours. Visible underlayers preserve the history of each image. Faces often remain hidden, bodies appear still, and ordinary objects gain symbolic weight. His restrained visual language creates tension between intimacy and distance, darkness and light.
His recent work revisits orientalist paintings and historical archives. He relocates their visual language into contemporary Middle Eastern settings shaped by war, migration, and reconstruction. Through this process, he questions romanticised representations of the region and examines how history is remembered, altered, and carried forward.
Alongside his studio practice, Hashem teaches drawing and painting and develops workshops centred on observation, material experimentation, and shared experience.
Exhibitions
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Between Dust & Light
12-26 September
Solo Exhibition
Gallery Intussen
Amsterdam
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Hush Hush 2026
May 29 - 2026
May 31 - 2026
Retramp Gallery
Berlin
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Big Art 2025
Friday, September 26
Sunday, September 28Het Slotervaart - Amsterdam
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This Art Fair 2025
Thursday, June 5
Sunday, June 8,DOOR OPEN SPACE - Amsterdam
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Big Art 2024
Friday, September 27
Sunday, September 29Het Slotervaart - Amsterdam
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Kunstruimte Kuub 2024
Friday, May 10
Monday, June 10Utrecht, NL
Solo 2024
Galatea Foundation in de etalage van KuuB
'As humans, we are always trying to understand who we are, and sometimes we think we do, but do we really? When we experience events that change all perspectives, how does this affect our identity? How do we see the world around us when all values have changed?
My new series of paintings presents spontaneous scenes of surreal explorations of human identity.
We are the hero of our story, the gods of our own existence. How will our next step shape us?' -
The great change 2023
Thursday, June 1 2023
Saturday, July 1, 2023Solo exhibition
Perkreality Armenian Park- George Town - Malaysia 2023
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WATAMULA 2022
Sunday, June 19, 2022
Sunday, January 8, 2023Dordrecht, NL
Wanderlust - Watamula
Wanderlust – Watamula 's presentation enters into a dialogue with Wanderlust and shows contemporary art about wanderlust and the urge to expand, for better and for worse. With a great sense of beauty, but also with an open eye for the destructive traces we leave behind, six artists depict a quest across the border. They take us to the horizon, exposing hidden roots and zooming in on the rich fabric of cultures, which sometimes also has scars.
Work by Hans Broek, Charlotte Schleiffert, Amjad Hashem, Inge Meijer, Kevin Osepa and Jennifer Tee will be on display.
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Tot Slot - Vrijheid 2022
Friday, May 13, 2022
Sunday, June 26, 2022Slot zeist, NL
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Nieuw land - nieuw huis 2021
Thursday, October 14, 2021
Sunday, November 7, 2021Landhuis Oud Amelisweerd, Bunnik, NL
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Female 2021
Female 2021
Saturday, August 14, 2021
Sunday, September 26, 2021FEMALE: A CONDITION DEVOID OF DESIRE
Meet the ‘Female’ at Motormond. Being female consists of many aspects beyond what meets the eye and eventually becoming a female is an open and ongoing interpretation.
Andrea Long Chu’s Females (2019) and Valerie Sonas’ SCUM Manifesto (1967) interpretations are the core theses that this exhibition roots itself. Through the paintings and photographs of Alma Surreal, Lorenco, Amjad Hashem, and Jean-Paul Paula, ‘Female’ examines how desire relates to the construction of femaleness and its image, operating between the boundaries of the authentic self desired self and the desire projected onto oneself by others.
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EXPO POP-UP MOSQUE 2020
Thursday, March 5, 2020
Sunday, November 7, 2021CBK Zuidoost Amsterdam