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Where Once Being a What begins with presence under restriction, Once Being a When begins with absence. The series is based on archival references found in a UNESCO catalogue of the Kabul Museum covering the period from 1931 to 1985. Once home to more than 120,000 objects, today the museum holds only a fraction of that number, with many works having been lost, destroyed, or displaced over the course of decades of conflict.

Using a custom-built algorithmic programme that renders three-dimensional objects from two-dimensional images, Mohammadi reconstructed speculative forms from grainy black-and-white archival photographs. This process does not seek to achieve traditional accuracy; instead, it engages with the instability of the source material. The resulting objects are shaped as much by what is missing as by what can be inferred.

Unlike the hollow forms of Once Being a What, these objects are made of solid glass. Rather than suggesting absence, they embody accumulation. Layers of loss, transformation, and projection are condensed within their form. They appear as condensed carriers of time, bearing the marks of both disappearance and reconstitution.