Samira Badran was born in Tripoli, Libya, in 1954, into a family of noteworthy Palestinian artists. Her father, Jamal Badran (1909-1999), was an artist and an expert in the field of Islamic arts and crafts. A skilled sculptor and painter, he applied his expertise to materials as varied as parchment, paper, ceramic, wood, and glass, and was also prolific in artistic bookbinding and embossed leather works. Samira graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Cairo in 1976 and completed graduate training in etching and painting at the Academia de Belle Arti in Florence in 1982. During the two years that elapsed between finishing in Egypt and beginning in Italy, Badran taught art at the UNWRA-run women’s teacher training center in Ramallah.
Although her artistic practices have evolved over her forty-year career, Samira Badran continues to produce work that considers themes of mobility and claustrophobia in the Palestinian context. Samira Badran has exhibited extensively across the globe in cities as diverse as Florence, Baghdad, London, Jerusalem, and Washington, DC. She has lived and worked in Barcelona since the early 1980s.