Culture Night 2025: ‘Guardians over the city’, a public artwork by Samir Mahmood

Guardians over the city is a series of flags inspired by Samir Mahmood’s use of Indo-Persian miniature painting, which is rich in detail and storytelling. Motifs, colour and symbols draw inspiration from gardens, water and skylines found in such paintings. They suggest a spiritual, peaceful space within the fusion of cultures and communities of the city, even where there are challenges experienced across communities to be countered. The artist see’s the flags as portals for imagination and as guardians of the city, a place to transcend your current situation and see things as beautiful and better. They seek a higher level of understanding, mindful of everyone’s life in the city.

Along the Liffey quays Mahmood’s flags inspire moments of mindfulness in an urban landscape. Like the art in the galleries and museums, Flags: Guardians over the city give a moment to be contemplative and still.

Flag Descriptions

Flag 1: The garden as a symbol of paradise and utopia across religions, a symbol of a place of happiness, a place to gather.

Flag 2: Referencing Jaali (a perforated stone or latticed screen) as a symbol of paradise and utopia across religions. Jaali allows light and air in while offering protection from sun and rain.

Flag 3: The Urdu word Qarar (قرار) primarily translates to agreement, peace, or tranquility. It can also mean residence, dwelling, or settlement, and in a more abstract sense, permanence, stability, or firmness. Additionally, it can refer to a state of rest, repose, or quietness.

Flag 4: The Star, a Persian miniature symbol, radiating hope. Landscape, sky and cloud motifs.

Flag 5: The number 0 is a spiritual symbol and also visually resembling a circle, it symbolises eternity, oneness, potential, infinity, wholeness, cycles and flow, listening to your intuition, and beginning of a spiritual journey. Like an atom is to the physical world and a soul to the spiritual world, the zero is symbolic of both worlds.

Samir Mahmood is an artist based in Dublin, born in Pakistan. His art practice explores migration, spirituality and queer identity drawing from Indo-Persian miniature painting, rich in detail and storytelling. Using painting, textiles, photography and film, his artistic research reflects on his lived experience as a queer person raised in an Islamic environment. His work speaks to a personal transformative potential, representing a spiritual awakening, as well as a subversion of normative lifestyle. Mahmood embraces hybridity, and blends gender indeterminacy and fluidity with his own cultural experiences. Recent solo exhibitions include Symplegmatic Portals, SIRIUS Arts Centre, 2025. Recent group exhibitions include Staying with the Trouble, IMMA, 2025.

Flags can be seen flying over the Liffey on Wellington Quay this September. There is an accompanying drop-in workshop at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios on Culture Night.

For further accessibility information please contact Learning + Public Engagement Curator Órla Goodwin.