Visual Alchemy: Artist Discussion with Samira Abbassy

Please join us for a discussion with Samira Abbassy, multimedia artist and co-founder of the Elizabeth Foundations for the Arts in New York, from 5:00-6:00 p.m. in Beam Classroom of the VAC. Abbassy will introduce her practice and artistic influences before discussing her upcoming collaboration with the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, a project taking her into the art collection and archives of the institution.

Working across drawing, painting, and sculpture, Abbassy explores cross-cultural pollination and the porous boundaries of time, geography, and emotional states. Her distinct visual language synthesizes her European art training, Persian Qajar court portraiture, Indian and Persian miniature painting, Jungian psychological archetypes, Hindu iconography, and more. Join us to hear how she weaves together these disparate traditions in search of universal understandings and a new artistic canon.

This program is presented in conjunction with the forthcoming exhibition "Samira Abbassy: After Apocalypse" opening December 10, 2026. To complement the exhibition, Abbassy will create new work born out of her research into the Museum collections and College archives with critical attention to the fragmented nature of these historical bodies.

Image: Samira Abbassy, "Ghosts of her Migration," 2016, oil on gesso panel. Cincinnati Art Museum, Alice Bimel Endowment for Asian Art, 2025.15. Image courtesy of the Cincinnati Art Museum. Copyright Samira Abbassy.

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