Bird Garden with Intestinal Self-Portrait

Location

Country: Other
City: other locations abroad

Samira Abbassy's collage shows a female figure, her hair raised and her internal organs revealed in X-ray fashion. Her expression conveys what Abbassy describes as a state of rapture, as if in a meditative trance. Nearby are trees inhabited by colourful birds, with some of their patterns derived from Indian textile blocks.

Inspired by "The Conference of Birds", a twelfth-century verse by the Persian poet Farid Al-Din Attar, Abbassy's work depicts the physical and spiritual elements of human existence. Inspired by this idea, the natural forms of the trees and birds symbolise self-knowledge, while the woman's body represents the anatomical or physical aspect of life.

Samira Abbassy was born in Ahwaz, Iran in 1965 but at the age of two she and her family emigrated to England, where they settled in Kent. She studied for her BA in fine art and painting at Canterbury College of Art from 1984 to1987. She has exhibited in Tel Aviv, Madrid and London, where she won the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition M&G Prize in 1997 for the best painting by an artist under 35. Today she lives and works in New York where solo exhibitions of her work were held at the Skoto Gallery in 2002 and at the Anthony Giordano Gallery at Dowling College in 2007.

People

Samira Abbassy (1965 - )

Places

Subjects

Farid al-Din Attar, poetry, self-portrait, tree, bird, intestine, lung, vein, Iranian, woman, meditation, rapture, Middle Eastern, paradise, culture, garden

Materials & Techniques

mixed media (art material), mixed media (art object)

Artist

Samira Abbassy (1965 - )

Title

Bird Garden with Intestinal Self-Portrait

Date

2003

Medium

Indian petal paper, collage, ink, gouache and acrylic

Dimensions

height: 38.10 cm, width: 55.50 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from the artist, February 2003

Inscription

br: Samira Abbassy

Provenance

the artist

GAC number

17758