Exhibitions
Wisam has been exhibiting internationally for years, bringing his distinctive ceramic artistry to galleries, cultural institutions, and public spaces across different countries and communities. His work has resonated with audiences from the Middle East to Europe, reflecting a lifelong dedication to craftsmanship rooted in tradition yet unmistakably contemporary in its expression.
Each exhibition represents a display of finished pieces and a milestone in an evolving artistic practice!
This page is a visual record of that journey. Scroll down to explore photographs from exhibitions held throughout the years, each one a window into the settings, spaces, and moments where Wisam's work has been shared with the world.
Galleri F 15 - Moss, Norway (2026)
Wisam was showing new work in "47. Tendenser: Knadd. Formet. Brent." at Galleri F 15, given his own room among ten Nordic artists exploring clay as a material of history, resistance and touch. His ceramics sit within the exhibition's quiet, rhythmic dialogue between hand and material, where form is pressed, shaped and finally fixed by fire.
Galleri F 15 is one of Norway's oldest and most respected venues for contemporary art and craft, housed in a 19th-century manor at Alby Gård on Jeløya, just outside Moss. Since 1966, the gallery has paired ambitious exhibition programming with its striking historical setting, a place where the architecture is as much a part of the experience as the art itself.
Tendenser has run for over 50 years as the leading Nordic platform for material-based craft. The 2026 edition, curated by Maria C. Havstam, gathers ten artists from Norway, Sweden and Denmark around clay and ceramics, alongside a dedicated room honouring Erik Pløen, the pioneer who helped launch Tendenser back in 1971.
(Residency) The International Ceramic Sculpture Symposium - Bolesławiec, Poland (2026)
Wisam spent a month in Bolesławiec, Poland, as one of ten artists invited to the 62nd International Ceramic and Sculpture Plein-Air. The residency began on 27 July 2026 and brought together ceramic artists from Poland, Latvia, Slovenia, Serbia, the USA, China and Norway to exchange experiences and make new work.
Bolesławiec is considered the capital of hand-crafted stoneware in Poland. The town is famous for its iconic hand-stamped blue-and-white pottery, and ceramics are part of its everyday life and identity. For the participants, the residency meant working inside this tradition rather than just visiting it. The artists made their pieces in the town's own ceramic workshops and factories, where access to the studios and production facilities is a central part of the programme.
This year's theme was "SUBLIME", a concept that has been part of art history since the eighteenth century. It describes the experience that sits between delight and anxiety, and between beauty and uncertainty in the face of something greater than ourselves. The artists were invited to interpret it in their own way, through clay, fire and time, all of which carry an element of unpredictability.
During his stay, Wisam also toured several of the factories in Bolesławiec and saw the production process up close, from the making of the forms to the finished pottery. The pieces he made in Bolesławiec will be exhibited in 2027.
(Residency) IAC Special Residency Project - Jingdezhen, China (2026)
In spring 2026, Wisam took part in the IAC Special Residencies Project in China. The project was set up by the International Academy of Ceramics ahead of its 52nd Congress, and sixty IAC artist members were selected to come to China and work there for two and a half to three months, from March and April until the end of June. The artists were spread across seven ceramic centres in different parts of the country.
Wisam was one of two artists placed at the Sanbao International Ceramic Art Village in Jingdezhen. Sanbao lies in a valley outside the city, and the valley has its own place in the history of porcelain. For centuries it was the source of the porcelain stone used by the workshops in Jingdezhen, and it was filled with water-powered hammer mills that crushed the stone. The residency was started in 2000 and was the first of its kind in China. It keeps a working ceramic village on site, so artists who stay there work next to local potters rather than on their own.
Jingdezhen is the Porcelain Capital of China. The city has made porcelain for more than a thousand years and supplied the imperial court for centuries, and it is still built around the material. The craft is divided between people who have each spent a lifetime on one part of the process, one who throws, one who trims, one who paints, one who fires. Much of the knowledge has been handed down inside families and workshops rather than written down.
The works made during the residencies were shown together at the Taoxichuan Art Museum in Jingdezhen, in an exhibition that opened on 28 June. One part of the exhibition, called Clay for Peace, gathered pieces that IAC members had made together, or made with Chinese artists and local craftspeople.
The exhibition opened during the 52nd IAC Congress, held in Jingdezhen from 27 June to 2 July 2026 and hosted by Jingdezhen Ceramic University and the city. The theme of the congress was Inheritance and Innovation, which is also the question the city itself keeps returning to: what to carry on from a thousand years of porcelain, and what to do differently.
Blaker Skanse - Blaker, Norway (2026)
Wisam works clay into a study of light. Turquoise, blue and green glazes pool and crystallize across the surfaces, opening the forms to space and transparency, while earthen bronze and ochre tones anchor the light and pull it close. Folded, cracked, orb-like: the sculptures sit like fragments of a landscape, shifting as you move around them.
The exhibition was held at Blaker Skanse, a fortress built in 1683 to guard the border with Sweden. Decommissioned in 1820, it later became Norway's national school for handicrafts, and today its timbered attic rooms house a community of artists and a gallery.
Senter for keramisk kunst - Ringebu, Norway (2026)
Wisam's contribution takes over the floor: a field of ceramic spheres in different sizes, each carrying a different Arabic word for love written in calligraphy. None of the spheres are perfectly smooth. Their surfaces are rough, layered and broken in places, giving them a strong connection to nature, with hints of landscape running through them that feel close to the Norwegian terrain.
The work is shown at Senter for Keramisk Kunst in Ringebu, as part of "RESPONS! Norwegian Ceramics 1975–2026," an exhibition spanning 63 artists across five decades of Norwegian ceramic practice, alongside student projects and work from the center's own Monumental Studio.
Kunstgarasjen - Bergen, Norway (2026)
44 ceramic spheres rest across the gallery floor, each carrying Arabic words for love pressed into its surface. No two are alike in size or color, and their rough, layered textures echo stone shaped by time and weather, as they carry the traces of the Norwegian landscape itself. A golden circle, drawn from the calligraphic dot that defines Arabic letters, recurs across the works, holding the installation together as one system.
The art installation was shown at Kunstgarasjen, the largest contemporary art gallery in Bergen and Vestland county. Housed in a converted industrial building of over 500 square meters, the space represents more than a hundred artists and has built its reputation on bringing serious contemporary work to a wide public.
Kunstnerforbundet - Oslo, Norway (2026)
The show centers on "Snowflake," a monumental wall work stretching 5.5 meters, built from 27 hexagonal units in high-fired stoneware. Wisam takes the snowflake as a structural idea: each unit shares a family resemblance with the next, yet carries its own texture, height and rhythm, echoing how every snow crystal forms under the same law while never repeating itself. Subtle shifts across the surface let light move and change with the viewer's position, and traces of Wisam's cultural background surface quietly within the hexagonal grid without ever dominating it.
The exhibition was held at Kunstnerforbundet, one of Scandinavia's oldest artist-run galleries, founded in Oslo in 1910. It shows contemporary art and craft from across Norway and runs a sales department alongside its exhibition program.
RAM Galleri - Oslo, Norway (2025)
The exhibition brings together Wisam's abstract wall reliefs, works built from Arabic calligraphy and geometric form pressed into clay and fired in dense, layered glazes. Jagged, irregular shapes carry dense compositions of color, texture and symbol, some hung as small clusters, others as long rows across the wall, alongside freestanding pieces that bring the same visual language into three dimensions.
The exhibition was held at RAM galleri, a multidisciplinary gallery in central Oslo working at the intersection of contemporary art, craft and design. Wisam's work draws on his training in Baghdad and the ceramic traditions of ancient Mesopotamia, reworking that heritage into abstract compositions that also speak to European Modernism.
KRAFT - Bergen, Norway (2024)
Love sits at the center of this show. Wisam draws on Kufic script in the Arabic calligraphy, and pairs it with motifs from Norwegian petroglyphs (helleristninger), tying two ancient writing traditions together across time and geography. The ceramic pieces play on contrast throughout: hard-edged script against soft, organic clay, warm tones against cold ones, small details against large ceramic masses. Each work carries a different Arabic synonym for love, worked into the surface alongside these Middle Eastern and Nordic motifs.
The exhibition is held at KRAFT, a center for contemporary ceramics and craft in central Bergen. Owned by the Norwegian Association of Arts and Crafts, KRAFT is dedicated to producing and presenting contemporary craft, supporting artists working in clay, textile, wood and metal.