Samira Abbassy (born 1965) is an Iranian-born British painter and draftsperson, of Arab heritage. Her work address issues of mythology, female deities, psyche, memory, and the diaspora.^[1][2][3] Abbassy lives in New York City, and previously lived in London.^[4]

Samira Abbasy was born in 1965 to an Arab family, in the city of Ahvaz in Khuzestan Province, Imperial State of Persia (now Iran).^[5] Her family moved to London when she was two years old, and she was raised in Kent.^[6][7] 

She studied drawing at Birmingham Polytechnic (now Birmingham City University) and then Canterbury College of Art (now Kent Institute of Art & Design), where she obtained a BFA degree in painting in 1987.^[5]

Abbasy began making art in the 1980s. After graduating, she exhibited her work in London for ten years, and then moved to New York City in 1998.^[7] Abbasy's work is a marriage between Western art and Eastern art traditions, including referencing Christian iconography, as well as Persian and Indian miniature painting, Chinese painting, and Qajar court painting.^[6]

She was awarded a fellowship by New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) in 2007.^[8] She was affiliated with the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective.^[9] The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts (EFA) awarded her a lifetime membership, in recognition of her work in developing the EFA Studio Program.^[10]

Abbasy's artworks are in public museum collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art,^[11] the British Museum,^[12] the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Grey Art Museum collection at New York University.^[13]

• List of Iranian women artists