ENRIQUE SAMAMA aka ENRIQUE SAMA

Artist name : Enrique Sama

1968, France, French.

 

I started drawing my father in the asylum and on his deathbed. I didn't have a camera at the time. So I was faced with a pencil, a blank sheet of paper, and the long process of trying to achieve something. My family didn't acknowledge my efforts.

 

That's why I think I went back to this long process with these minimal tools. When I needed to flee my family, who had gone to Israel, to the occupied territories, and my Spanish, Catholic mother, who had mistreated my sick father—a mix that didn't work— I no longer spoke to my mother, nor to my settler family in Israel. I built myself through another way of thinking where I was free: art. I am searching every day, every night.

 

The "finest sublimation," Cynthia Fleury (philosopher), through art, through life… Art and life allow us to discover who we are. Julia Kristeva (philosopher): "Everything is potentially art, that is to say, the multiplicity of possible sublimations…"

 

I encountered the art of Alberto Giacometti, always dissatisfied with his drawings, and that of Egon Schiele.  And then there was the dictate to no longer represent things after the horrors of the Second World War and the attempt by Zoran Music, a camp survivor. The need to break free from the Cobra movement. Because I was dissatisfied with drawing, I started making blots by mixing things that didn't go together (water, gasoline, oil paint). And one day I saw a really strange eye that drew me into the stain, and so I looked, and somehow (I'll be told later that it was in my subconscious) it went searching for the rest of the face, the rest of the body, the rest of the background, into my memories, into my soul. In 5 minutes.

 

I was losing control, letting things emerge that spoke to me deeply. I showed it to my wife, and she told me she was moved by the character's expression. That we were different but the same in the essential aspects of life. Then I understood that I could speak to others through my painting. By combining materials that don't mix, I try to bring forth a small child, who dares to breathe, who dares everything, to live with fragments, initially scattered. Of love and hate in the same image sometimes. Seeing that I had this power, I put love and beauty into my paintings.

 

Intimate, and universal because I touch on our shared intimacy in a new way.

 

On a human level, I blend the others around me (my wife, my daughter, my gay and lesbian friends, all humans, from all cultures, from all countries), and of course animals—our five cats, and all the animals in the world. But also, of course, nature, the smallest twig.

 

I then came across, during a visit, a quote from Emphedocles, from the 5th century BC, which I saw at the Mac Val exhibition in Paris, which I discovered in July 2025: "for once I was a young man and a young woman, a shrub and a bird, and a mute fish of the sea..." ... and black and white... Everything is possible and beautiful. Through art and through life: child (the societal problem of the child's place), man, woman (the societal problem of gender), branch, fish (the societal problem of nature and the environment).

 

The goal is to rise above by becoming richer.

 

This is about our world: everything that happens to us, everywhere in the world. Every day, I watch the news, documentaries on every topic I can find.

 

In the same moment of life,

I express so much.

 

I want to give love.

 

But it's not that simple. There's his death, their deaths, my death. The horror, the hatred...

 

And that's also why I paint more intensely. In my painting, in my search for forms of faces, bodies, children, old people, animals, pieces of wood, wings... to exist. And that's why I'm already living so intensely now.

 

And I met Sama (even though my name is Samama, a Jewish name), the only Palestinian Muslim DJ. I saw that she had been arrested. Then I saw that her mother nicknamed her Sama, because it means little flower, in this desert and all this destruction.

I found a way, without knowing it, to transcend, to show things in opposition, by searching because it's not easy, we manage to find something beautiful, something powerful: to create something universal: hatred, and to transcend it with love

so that I no longer do anything (when I watch the news every day). I met Marie Hémery, a psychoanalyst, who confirmed that my approach, where I work for hours until exhaustion, leaves room for our shared unconscious. This profoundly human experience allows us to better understand the implications of my work, which pushes the boundaries of consciousness. Deep down, so deep that it is shared with the other.

 

And the viewer recognizes in my work this unconscious part that is common because I have a wide range of emotions (between the greatest love and the greatest hate, between death and life, sometimes in the same painting). We are different, but we are the same on the essential points of life.

“This is a new attempt by a new artist to reach the human condition! His characters are these inner children who reveal themselves, transcend their limitations, and touch us through the raw expression of deep emotions. The unconscious would be this impression, this basic structure of identity formation. In fact, it expresses itself in black and white.”

 

There was Jannick Calvez, a journalist for Art Images magazine, who mentioned my work during the Imprudent exhibition, which she curated, in Brest. She quoted the words of the poet Yves Bonnefoy about the work of Alberto Giacometti. It's worth noting that Giacometti tried to draw his brother's face every night, but he felt they were always inadequate and destroyed them in the morning. Only a few are known, which his wife saved from destruction. And they are sublime... Janick Calvez says, "Enrique Sama approaches artistic creation as a liberating and chaotic experience, where he relinquishes control to allow raw and unsettling emotions to emerge. To the point of exhaustion." It is a fascinating exploration of the human psyche, marked by universal desires and anxieties. "It is an intuition that goes straight to the enigma, transforming it into something obvious; straight to what destroys and frightens, transforming it into a shared good."

 

When I work, for 8 to 10 hours straight, on dozens of sheets of paper, I try to lose control and paint at the edge of consciousness. The next day I look at it, and if it's not good, I continue for days until everything is there. It's the instinct for survival; I have nothing to lose.

 

I also wanted to talk to you about intensity and about Antonin Artaud, the artist, writer, poet, and draftsman, who also wrote *Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society*.

 

I had written directly on the wall where I paint, in my studio, right at the top: *Where is the confrontation? Here?* And I had written below it, *Artaud* first, and that led me to the idea that I wrote: *Attack the Paper*. And then much later, I added: *To Reach Gentleness*. I had written VAN GOGH, BACON, VELICOVICK, Arnulf RAINER, Marina ABRAMOVIC; they are constantly in my head: they are brothers and sisters. ARTAUD remained written because he is an insurmountable boundary: he is an artist and a madman.

 

During the meeting with the gallery owner, at the opening with the collectors, the spectators… I am capable of the highest purity, the highest intensity, the highest complicity: I read my text like a gentle performance, a dialogue with what we hold most dear,

 

and give everything once again.

 

I am here to show you that my work is utterly serious, profound, new, unique, and universal… and that I hope to be among your finest artists.

 

And I continue to cry out

while painting

in my painting it is a pure and gentle cry

primitive: animal, human, child, woman, from Gaza, from everywhere

to save myself, to save us

we can try.

 

My themes are topical and my works powerful!

 

In 2007, "Imprudent," a solo exhibition, was named Talent of the Year by the city of Brest (France).

 

My exhibition with the Factura festival, in Montaigne's homeland, explored the theme of humanity ("Each man bears the entire form of the human condition.") in 2008…

In 2010, at the Musée Marzelles, "De l'humain enfin" (Finally, of Humanity), Marmande, France, was a solo exhibition.

 

Until 2026, I have had significant exhibitions internationally: Galleries have offered me 3F art fairs: Galeria Azur NY (Red Dot Miami and Art Fair NY), Artio Gallery Toronto (Carrousel du Louvre), Galerie Heligkeit Munich (Zurich and Munich), and the Cobra Museum (in contact). I participated with the Divulgat group in Venice in a group exhibition with a title that is very important to me: "The Other Me." And another one in Florence: “genesis of a form”..

 

I'm developing my thinking, rewriting each time a part of my introductory text.

 

In 2017, I also created a group (40 people): "An Experiment in Collective" (on Tumblr). It was about bringing together people who didn't know each other, from different backgrounds (ethnicities, skin colors, professions, genders, ages, etc.). Each person would contribute what they could with what they had and who they were. The first question was: what kind of collective did they dream of? Each person could suggest a theme (for example, women, life, and freedom in Iran). Because I wanted to share with others I love the beauty of other artists I admire (the artist Marina Abramovic, the dancer Kahn, the filmmaker Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire).

 

Enrique Sama, march 2026