ARTIST STATEMENT
Kamran Samimi’s interdisciplinary practice explores the material and spiritual dimensions of nature as a coalescing of time and place. Shaped by his Iranian-Norwegian heritage and upbringing in rural Hawai‘i, his work reflects a life lived between worlds and guided by nature’s power to both create and transform. Influenced by Zen and Sufi philosophies, he approaches nature as a collaborator rather than a subject, influenced by early memories of volcanic eruptions, landslides, tsunamis, and morning mist.
Samimi holds a particular affinity for stone, which connects him to a state beyond human notions of beauty, brutality, and time itself. For him, stone serves as a wayfinding device through which he seeks belonging within an ever-changing world. His work becomes a meditation on displacement and mortality, yet ultimately gestures toward a timeless present unbound by past or future, offering a fleeting glimpse of eternity.
Kamran is represented by The Third Line (Middle East / North Africa) and re.riddle (San Francisco Bay Area)
Photo by Micheal Young
BIO
Kamran Samimi grew up in rural Laupāhoehoe on Hawaiʻi Island to parents of Iranian and Norwegian ancestry. He has been exhibiting art since 2008, and has had solo exhibitions at The Third Line, Dubai, the Sharjah Art Museum in United Arab Emirates, the Honolulu Museum of Art, and the Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture & Design.
His work is in the permanent collection of Michelle and Barack Obama, Mohammad Afkhami, the Sharjah Art Foundation, the Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, and the Hawai’i State Foundation of Culture and the Arts. Samimi was the recipient of the 2024 Artists of Hawai’i Best In Show Award and holds an BFA in Printmaking and an MFA in Print Media and Sculpture from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. He has gallery representation by The Third Line in Dubai and re.riddle in San Francisco.