Art Talk | Samira Abbassy + Linda Komaroff

Sunday, June 11th, 2023

4 PM PST

Virtual Art Talk: Linda Komaroff in conversation with Samira Abbassy

This talk is in conjunction with Samira Abbassy’s solo exhibition, Embodied Mythologies at ADVOCARTSY, and LACMA’s exhibition Women Defining Women in the Middle East and Beyond. The Embodied Mythologies exhibition has been extended through June 17th, 2023.

ADVOCARTSY West Hollywood

434 N La Cienega Blvd. LA 90048

info@advocartsy.com

View Recorded Talk

About Linda Komaroff

LINDA KOMAROFF, Curator and Department Head, Art of the Middle East, has been at LACMA since 1995. During her long curatorial career, she has helped to double the size of the museum’s collection of Islamic art, while in 2006 she began to acquire and exhibit contemporary art of the Middle East, placing LACMA’s collection at the forefront of American museums. She has two exhibitions at LACMA in 2023, one historical (Dining with the Sultan: The Fine Art of Feasting) and one contemporary (Women Defining Women in Contemporary Art of the Middle East and Beyond—currently on view) She is the recipient of multiple grants for scholarly research, including two Fulbright fellowships, and Metropolitan Museum of Art and Getty fellowships. She has taught at Hamilton College, NYU, UCLA and most recently, ASU. Through her acquisitions, installations, and exhibitions, she has been concerned with challenging an American audience’s perceptions of Islamic culture and societies, and with demonstrating the deep connection between past and present, which is at the heart of any encyclopedic art museum.

About Samira Abbassy

Samira Abbassy was born in Ahwaz, Iran in 1965 and moved to London, UK as a child. After graduating from Canterbury College of Art, she began showing in London. She moved to New York in 1998, where she helped to set up the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, and the EFA Studio Center. Her work has been included in shows at the Metropolitan and the British Museum and is in private and public collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum, British Museum, the British Government Art Collection, the Grey Art Gallery at NYU, the Burger Collection, the Donald Rubin collection (Rubin Museum, NY), the Farjaam Collection, Dubai, the Los Angeles County Museum and the Afkhami Collection. During Abbassy’s thirty-year career, her work has been the subject of twenty gallery solo shows in London, Dubai, and New York. Her fellowships include the Yaddo fellowship in 2006 and 2022 and Saltonstall in 2017. She has been awarded two NYFA awards in 2007 and 2018, a Joan Mitchell award in 2010, and a Pollock-Krasner in 2014. Abbassy was also nominated for the Anonymous Was a Woman award in 2018. In 2019 her work was included in the 26th Venice Biennial presented by Heist gallery London. Abbassy has also worked as an educator in many educational institutions in the UK and the USA, some of which are: Hunter College, Penn State, and the University of Virginia, where she was the artist in Residence in April 2012. In 2023 her work will be included in Women Defining Women in Contemporary Art in the Middle East and Beyond, Curated by Linda Komaroff, Los Angeles County Museum.