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samira abbassy

@samiraabbassy

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Co-founder EFA Studios. NYC
@metmuseum collection @britishmuseum collection

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Loss, resilience and art…and hopefully a glimpse into the profound and joyful spirit of a contemporary artist!

Samira Abbassy is an Iranian born, contemporary British painter who has worked in New York since 1998.

Thanks Samira for the inspiring conversation!
———
El dolor de la pérdida, la resiliencia y el arte… y, ojalá, una mirada al espíritu alegre de una artista.

Samira Abbassy, pintora británica nacida en Irán, trabaja en Nueva York desde 1998.

¡Gracias, Samira, por esta conversación tan inspiradora!

#ContemporaryArt
#ArtistPortrait
#ContemporaryArtists taken in New York City by @samiraabbassy

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3 days ago

Matricide, mixed media sculpture arrangement.
Thoughts on grouping/ arranging these sculptures and their parts leads to unexpected narratives.

#contemporarysculpture
#reliquaries
#foundobjectsculpture
#ceramicsculpture taken in EFA Studios by @samiraabbassy

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5 days ago

Sculpture fragments in progress: Twin embryos in open uterus. Plaster, rubber and fabric. Part of a broader instalation for an upcoming show.
#contemporarysculpture
#inutero
#birthing
#mixedmediasculpture
#efacofounder taken in EFA Studios by @samiraabbassy

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13 days ago

Absolution
Detail of a larger work, oil on canvas, in progress. EFA Studios 2026
October 9th – 10th
Free & open to the public
323 West 39th Street, NYC 10018
#efaopenstudios
#efacofounder
#qajarpainting This year marks the 27th year of EFA Open Studios, an event I initiated in 1999, one year after I moved from London to New York to establish EFA Studios.
I was one of the three co-founders of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts and EFA Studios, and for more than three decades I have been involved in developing its ideas, policies, programming, and its mission of supporting artists.
For approximately 25 years, I opened my studio to the public as part of Open Studios.
Today, I am restricted from using EFA's media and communications platforms, including being unable to tag efa_nyc, despite being a co-founder and lifetime Senior Member. I have also been denied or restricted from accessing membership services available to other EFA members, including interns and other member resources.
What has become particularly obvious is that the community of EFA members itself seems increasingly unable to speak openly or support one another around these issues. I have heard from members who are concerned about speaking out, including concerns about whether taking a position could affect their relationship with the institution or the renewal of their membership.
This creates a culture of fear and secrecy, in which members may feel that it is safer to remain silent than to question decisions or support a fellow member.
I am documenting this because institutional history matters.
Open Studios was not simply an event I participated in. It was something I helped create, and it became an important part of EFA's culture and relationship with the public.
Twenty-seven years later, I am still here in the community I helped to build, still making the work, and still part of that history.
#EFAOpenStudios #EFAStudios #ElizabethFoundationForTheArts #NYCArtists #ArtistStudios #InstitutionalHistory #ArtistsRights taken in EFA Studios by @samiraabbassy

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a month ago

Caught in a Net, 2026, collage and gouache on paper.
Yaddo Benefit Auction from sept 26th.
I've had the pleasure of being in residence at Yaddo 3 times over 20 years and have cherished memories of that magical place and the wonderful artists I met there.
@yaddotoday
#artauction
#artistresidencies
#worksonpaper taken in Yaddo by @samiraabbassy

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a month ago

Rapture
Oil on canvas
#wipdetail
#figurativepainting
#allegoricalpainting
#efamemberartist
#efaopenstudios taken in Elizabeth Foundation for The Arts by @samiraabbassy

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2 months ago

Ancestor Birds - flight of souls
#wipdetail
Acrylic and oil on panel
#fairuz
#iraniancontemporaryart painting
#maternalancesters taken in Elizabeth Foundation for The Arts by @samiraabbassy

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2 months ago

Detail of large canvas in progress
Consumed
#fairuz #Lebanon #contemporarypainting #erasure #exile taken in Elizabeth Foundation for The Arts by @samiraabbassy

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2 months ago

“Abbassy’s paintings are poised with stillness. Like the silent cinema of sleep when, safe in our beds, our unconscious taps at portals usually kept closed as if to say: look, this part of me remains left to be heard. The effect is like a medieval icon shimmering with the patina of past lives.” - Dr Sona Datta

Working across painting and sculpture, Abbassy draws on her Persian heritage, mythology and personal memory to create works that exist between dream and reality. Her figures are at once familiar and elusive, unfolding as psychological landscapes where identity is fluid and the subconscious comes to the surface.

Tomorrow is the final day to view Of Loss and Redemption.

Discover the full exhibition via the link in our bio.

~

Samira Abbassy
Of Loss and Redemption
Online Solo Exhibition
7 July – 4 August 2026

~

#SamiraAbbassy #TaymourGrahneProjects #ContemporaryArt #OnlineExhibition taken in Taymour Grahne Projects by @samiraabbassy

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3 months ago

“How do I love thee?” Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s famous line becomes something more layered in Samira Abbassy’s Let me count the ways I love thee (2025). Rather than offering certainty, the work suggests that love is inseparable from memory, transformation, and the identities we carry with us.

Through collage and oil, Abbassy constructs a surface where fragments, symbols, and figures coexist, reflecting the complexity of human experience. As throughout Of Loss and Redemption, the work embraces contradiction, proposing that tenderness and resilience are often shaped by the same histories.

Discover the full exhibition via the link in our bio.

~~~

Samira Abbassy
Of Loss and Redemption
Online Solo Exhibition
7 July – 4 August 2026

~~~

Samira Abbassy
Let me count the ways I love thee, 2025
Collage and oil on paper, unframed
68.5 × 51 cm / 27 × 20 in.

#SamiraAbbassy #TaymourGrahneProjects #ContemporaryArt #OnlineExhibition taken in Taymour Grahne Projects by @samiraabbassy

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3 months ago

“Loss, here, is not only destructive, but also constitutive. Loss can make space for renewal and reconfiguration.”

In Threading her Yellow (2025), Samira Abbassy distills her symbolic language into a striking, pared-back composition. A solitary figure is accompanied by recurring faces and multiplied hands, suggesting that identity is never fixed but continually shaped through memory, transformation, and lived experience. Through collage and oil, Abbassy creates an image that speaks less to certainty than to the quiet process of becoming.

Discover the full exhibition via the link in our bio.

~~~

Samira Abbassy
Of Loss and Redemption
Online Solo Exhibition
7 July – 4 August 2026

~~~

Samira Abbassy
Threading her Yellow, 2025
Collage and oil on canvas panel, unframed
40.5 × 51 cm. / 16 × 20 in.

#SamiraAbbassy #TaymourGrahneProjects #ContemporaryArt #OnlineExhibition taken in Taymour Grahne Projects by @samiraabbassy

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3 months ago

“This work is part of my Exoskeleton series, a body of wall-mounted paint forms that exists between painting and sculpture. Through layered materials and accumulated surfaces, they explore protection as both a physical and psychological condition. Rather than functioning as armor, the works imagine protection as something porous, adaptive, and continually evolving.”
-Anahita Vossoughi
. . .
Anahita Vossoughi (b. 1975)
Exoskeleton 4 Protection: Ocean, 2021
Acrylic, latex and oil paint, ink, clay, plaster, glue, sand,
grout, polystyrene beads, decorative gravel, sequin,
faux metal leaf, and bejeweled fishnet stockings on
laser cut wood
55.9 x 25.5 x 14 cm | 22 x 10 x 5 1/2 in
. . .
Currently installed in “Practices of Uncertainty”— curated by Samira Abbassy and on view at Richard Saltoun Gallery through August 21st.
..
Summer hours: Tuesday-Friday,
11AM to 6PM and by appointment, 19 East 66th Street, Third floor,
New York City.
. . .
Image courtesy of Brief Histories. Photo by Isak Berbić. taken in Richard Saltoun Gallery by @samiraabbassy

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3 months ago