Hayv Kahraman: Project Series 52
Los Angeles-based artist Hayv Kahraman creates exquisite figurative paintings on large linen panels that depict a singular woman with iridescent pale skin and inky black hair. Frequently presented in a group of identical female figures, the woman often appears nude or clad in shawls decorated with Islamic geometric patterns. The artist borrows from a multiplicity of styles, including Persian miniatures, Japanese illustrations, and Italian Renaissance paintings in the composition of the woman’s poses and appearance, creating a discourse between Eastern “otherness” and Western concepts of beauty.
In her most recent work, Kahraman has incorporated a weaving technique drawn from the Iraqi hand-woven fans called mahaffa—one of her few family heirlooms. In the new series, she intentionally cuts into her canvases—her painted body—and then weaves in fragments of other shredded, or dismembered, paintings, creating newly “mended” representations of female bodies and “healed” memories of past trauma.
Kahraman’s paintings take on themes of violence and involuntary migration as she processes her childhood in the war-torn country of Iraq and her adolescence in Sweden as a refugee. While Kahraman’s work is intertwined with the histories of the Iran-Iraq and Gulf Wars, it is also invested in the idea of feminine collectivity, identity, belonging, and diasporic cultural memory. For Kahraman, the figure she paints represents herself as a colonized woman. Through the body of this woman, the repetitive nature of her work, and the act of shredding and mending, Kahraman grapples with a history of displacement, loss, memory, and trauma.
Gendering Memories of Iraq
"Gendering Memories of Iraq," a collective performance created by artist Hayv Kahraman. Performers: Vaneh Assadourian, Merjen Atayeva, Toritseju Danner, Sacha Elie, and Karina Fathi.
Performed on October 11, 2018 at Pomona College in conjunction with exhibition Hayv Kahraman: Project Series 52.
September 4 – December 22, 2018 at the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College
About the Artist
Hayv Kahraman was born in Baghdad, Iraq in 1981 and migrated to Sweden with her family after the first Gulf War, before settling in the United States. She received a degree in graphic design from the Academy of Art and Design in Florence, Italy (2005). In addition to numerous group shows, Kahraman’s solo exhibitions include the Contemporary Art Museum in Saint Louis, Missouri (2017); Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska (2016); Jack Shainman Gallery in New York (2016); the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, California (2016); and The Third Line in Dubai (2016). Kahraman was shortlisted for the Victoria and Albert Museum’s Jameel Prize in 2011, and is a recipient of the Excellence in Cultural Creativity award from the Global Thinkers Forum. Kahraman is represented by The Third Line, Jack Shainman Gallery, and Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects.
Curator
Rebecca McGrew
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