Samira Abbassy: Psychic Intrusion
Curated by Taymour Grahne
Richard Saltoun Gallery New York is pleased to announce Psychic Intrusion, the inaugural solo exhibition by Iranian-born, New York-based artist Samira ABBASSY (b. 1965) with the gallery. Spanning over a decade of paintings and works on paper, the exhibition traces Abbassy’s ongoing exploration of the figure as a physical and metaphysical entity, uncovering the many layers of the Self through the lens of both personal and universal narratives. Her practice draws on a mixture of European and Iranian-Persian artistic traditions, pre-Renaissance art, Jungian psychoanalysis, and autobiographical elements—particularly her matriarchal lineage—to explore the complexities of diasporic identity, foregrounding the interplay between individual memory and collective history.
Abbassy’s compositions create a dialogue between the intimate and the archetypal, merging elements of mothers, daughters, and ancestral spirits to emphasize cross-generational cultural inheritance. The exploration of her Iranian- Persian heritage is particularly connected to her grandmother. Tactile memories—including tattoos, fabrics, and braids—recur in her works as symbolic markers or anchors of both continuity and change. Growing up in London, Abbassy regarded her grandmother as both a familial anchor and a cultural bridge to her roots. In her painting style, she reinterprets the intricate patterns, vibrant palettes, and stylized, flattened perspectives of Qajar court paintings and Persian miniatures, interweaving these influences with Western techniques to address the lived history of diasporic identity.
Concepts from Jungian psychoanalysis form a key influence in Abbassy’s central inquiry into representing the figure; particularly archetypes, duality, and the collective unconscious. Across her oeuvre, mirrored figures - alluding to the Jungian Ego versus Shadow - evoke an introspective dialogue and underscore the multifaceted nature of identity. Works such as Psychic Surgery, Mirror Portal, and Xray Mirror indeed deploy the mirror as a psycho-emotional X-ray, revealing layers of the Self and laying bare tensions between internal forces. Resonating with Surrealism’s interest in liberating the subconscious, Abbassy’s dreamlike yet often raw, violent, and visceral symbolic vocabulary points to metamorphosis, revelation, and psychological conflict, foregrounding the friction between mind and body in states of profound rupture and transformation.
Motifs of transcendence and metamorphosis such as birds and butterflies feature prominently across the artist’s paintings and drawings, such as The Beating of Her Wings and Crimson Flight #1 and #2. Birds conjure the “flight of the imagination and the infinity of the soul,” while butterflies evoke metamorphosis and transcendence. Earlier works on paper, including Dept of Nuclear Med. Surgery and Floral Mortal Coils, employ anatomical and medical imagery to probe emotional and mental processes, emphasizing human fragility amid constant flux. These two charcoal works belong to the artist's important series, Chemical Hysterical, with other pieces having been exhibited at LACMA in 2023 and included in the British Museum’s permanent collection.
In the recent diptych of Consuming Herself and Received Projections, a mirrored female figure is engulfed in flames, surrounded by a cluster of disembodied heads. These spectral faces appear as manifestations of past selves, ancestral echoes, and internal conflicts, underscoring the fracturing of identity across time and experience. Drawing on Dante’s Inferno and its depiction of figures “contorted according to their sin,” Abbassy visualizes psychic turmoil—embodied here by flame and fragment—as a catalyst for catharsis. The disembodied heads not only point to unresolved psychological tensions, but also speak to the ways in which the Self is constantly shaped by the illusions and projections that accumulate from personal, familial, and collective mythologies.
Abbassy uses her own history and heritage as a lens through which broader questions of identity, belonging, and the Self may be examined. Through her unique symbolic repertoire, she reveals the porous boundaries between different timelines, geographies, and spiritual traditions. In her most recent body of work, created over the past year, Abbassy’s guiding observation of a kind of ‘Psychic Intrusion’ meditates on how rapidly intensifying external forces shape our perception of the inner Self and reality in an ever-shifting world: “The personal and collective psyche is undergoing an enormous evolution. We are adapting to the speed and breadth of technological developments, and amid this information overload and loss of faith in institutions, we are left to create our own realities and personal mythologies.”
Press enquiries: sonja@richardsaltoun.com
