About

I make paintings, scrolls, objects and installations that ask what an artwork does to the body that encounters it.

Biography

Samir Mahmood is a visual artist based in Dublin, born in Peshawar, Pakistan, where he lived for part of his life within a Sufi shrine. He trained and practised as a doctor before completing a PhD in Health Promotion and a BA in Contemporary Art Practices.

His practice spans painting, scrolls, textiles, objects, video and installation, reworking Indo-Persian miniature traditions into built environments: portals, sanctuaries and charged forms. Queerness runs through the work as method — an allegiance to thresholds and non-final selfhood.

Recent solo exhibitions include States, Stations (Luan Gallery, 2026) and Symplegmatic Portals (SIRIUS, 2025; RAMPA, Porto, 2025–26). He held IMMA’s Dwell Here residency in 2026, was shortlisted for the EVA Platform Commissions 2027, has received six successive Arts Council awards, and his work is held in The Glucksman collection. He serves on the board of Visual Artists Ireland.

Practice

The work draws on a Sufi shrine grammar — inscription, fabric, enclosure, repetition, offering and passage — and on the visual language of Indo-Persian miniature painting. These sources are extended into scrolls, thresholds, textiles and spatial installations.

Medical training is not presented as a metaphor. Clinical seeing, interoception, containment, care, risk and bodily systems increasingly determine the work’s materials and the conditions built around the viewer.

The practice does not recreate religious authority or promise transformation. It constructs situations in which attention and perception may shift, and treats what actually happens in an encounter — including uncertainty and null response — as part of the work’s evidence.

Curriculum vitae

Download current CV (PDF) ↗
Updated 2026 · 109 KB

Education

2018–2020 BA Contemporary Art Practices, Atlantic Technological University, Galway
2010–2014 PhD, Health Promotion, National University of Ireland Galway
2008–2009 MA, Health Promotion, National University of Ireland Galway
1993 MBBS, Khyber Medical College, University of Peshawar, Pakistan

Solo exhibitions

2026 States, Stations, Luan Gallery, Athlone
2025–2026 Symplegmatic Portals, RAMPA, Porto
2025 Symplegmatic Portals, SIRIUS Arts Centre, Cobh
2023 Of Other, and Possibility, MART Gallery, Dublin
2022 Balcony, St Thomas’ Hall, Dugort, Achill

Selected group exhibitions

2025–2026 The Medium is the Message, The College of Psychic Studies, London; Still, We Gather, Galway Arts Centre
2025 Staying with the Trouble, IMMA; Out of the Strong, Came Forth Sweetness, Trinity College Dublin; All Flowers in Time Bend Towards the Sun, Dublin Castle
2024 A Language to Shout In, Periodical Review 14, Pallas Projects/Studios; FSAS Presents, Fire Station Artists’ Studios; Mysterious Ways: Art, Faith and Transcendence, The Glucksman
2023 Connections, Boyle Arts Festival; Body Of, LHQ Gallery, Cork
2022 Take Hold, CCA Derry~Londonderry; Remaining Places, Backwater Artists; Braid, Sample Studios
2020 Re-Root, Embassy of Pakistan, Dublin
2018 Lost and Found, Galway Arts Centre
2017 B D G R L (Bad Girl), 126 Artist-Run Gallery
2016 Metamorphosis, 126 Artist-Run Gallery

Grants and awards

2026 Bursary Award, The Arts Council of Ireland; shortlisted, EVA Platform Commissions 2027
2025 Bursary Award, The Arts Council of Ireland
2024 Bursary Award, The Arts Council of Ireland
2023 Next Generation Artists’ Award, The Arts Council of Ireland
2022 Bursary Award, The Arts Council of Ireland
2021 Agility Award, The Arts Council of Ireland; Artist Support Scheme, Galway County Council
2020 Inaugural Mary Lavelle Burke Bursary Award

Residencies

2026 Dwell Here, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin
2025 SIRIUS Arts Centre, Cobh
2023–2025 Fire Station Artists’ Studios, Dublin
2024 Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Co. Monaghan
2021 Heinrich Böll Cottage, Achill
2015–2016 Resident Studio Tenant, 126 Artist-Run Gallery, Galway

Commission and collection

2025 Guardians over the City, Flags series commissioned by Temple Bar Gallery + Studios for Wellington Quay, Culture Night

Collection
The Glucksman, University College Cork

Selected press and critical writing

Seán Kissane, “Veiled Intimacies,” Irish Arts Review, Summer 2026. Read article ↗

Miguel Amado, “Symplegmatic Portals,” The Visual Artists’ News Sheet, January–February 2026. Issue information ↗

Pádraic E. Moore, “The Medium is the Message,” The Visual Artists’ News Sheet, January–February 2026.

Orla O’Byrne, “Mysterious Ways: Art, Faith and Transcendence,” Art + Christianity, June 2024.

Jennifer Redmond, “Braid,” The Visual Artists’ News Sheet, November 2022.

Institutional links

IMMA artist profile ↗
Luan Gallery — States, Stations ↗
SIRIUS — Symplegmatic Portals ↗
RAMPA — Symplegmatic Portals ↗
Temple Bar Gallery + Studios — Guardians over the City ↗

Contact

ranasamirart@gmail.com
@ranasamir

Born 1968, Peshawar, Pakistan. Lives and works in Dublin, Ireland. Board Member, Visual Artists Ireland.