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Hayv Kahraman

Iraqi

b. 1981

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  1. Star by Hayv Kahraman, Image 1.

    Hayv Kahraman

    Star, 2017

    Oil, linen, RSG and pigment on paper

    22.75 x 19 in (57.79 x 48.26 cm)

Hayv Kahraman was born in Baghdad in 1981 and currently resides in Los Angeles, CA. She attended the University of Umeå, Sweden, then studied art and design at the Florence Academy of Fine Arts. Kahraman has had recent solo exhibitions at institutions including the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco (2024), Rice University Moody Center For The Arts, Houston (2024), SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah (2022), Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture, and Design, Honolulu, HI (2019), Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont, CA (2018), and Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, MO (2017).

Kahraman’s work includes painting, performance, and sculpture and it explores themes of gender and body politics and migrant life. A recurring motif in her work is female figures whom she envisions as extensions of her body. Rather than being self-portraits, these women are intended to convey the collective experience of brown bodies existing within Eurocentric ideals. Kahraman draws upon her experience as a female Iraqi émigré; at age 11, Kahraman’s family fled to Sweden to escape the Gulf War. Her subjects are often disfigured in some way, representing underlying colonial histories and the sense of displacement and detachment facing refugees.