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Hayv KaHraman
About the Artist
Hayv Kahraman (b. 1981, Baghdad, Iraq) lives and works in Los Angeles, USA. When she was eleven, during the first Gulf war, Kahraman fled Iraq to Sweden. She would later go on to study at the University of Umea, Sweden, and at the Accademia di arte e design in Florence. Kahraman’s work can be found in such major collections as the American Embassy, Baghdad; the Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah; the British Museum, London; the Pizzuti Collection, Ohio; and the Saatchi Gallery, London. The artist was shortlisted for the Jameel Prize at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, in 2011 and 2018, and received the Excellence in Cultural Creativity, Global Thinkers Forum Award in 2014.
Kahraman’s work engages with themes of narrative, memory, the body and diaspora. She draws from her own experience as an Iraqi refugee, calling attention to the dehumanisation faced by women who are victims of colonisation, war and violence. Central to her work are female muses whose features and identities span various cultures.
At times, they evoke the miniature paintings found in twelfth century Baghdad and Japanese prints or woodcuts. Kharaman’s figures are contorted, with a veneer of seduction; they inquire into the eroticisation of the ‘other’.
Hayv Kahraman. Courtesy the artist and Pilar Corrias
WORKS IN THE COLLECTION
Hayv Kahraman, "Person nummer", 2015
Oil on linen, 243 x 185.4 cm
Courtesy the artist
In Person nummer, Kahraman highlights notions of fetishisation and voyeurism. The scene takes place in a boudoir, where two female figures strike exaggerated, sexualised poses. They are seemingly in conversation with each other, yet the right-hand figure also engages directly with the viewer: she gazes straight out of the image, showing an awareness of her exposed body and turning the viewer into a voyeur.
Hayv Kahraman, "Would You Like to Play? 2", 2016
Oil on wood panel with hand-painted magnets
183 × 122 cm
Courtesy the artist and The Third Line, Dubai
Would You Like to Play? 2 is an interactive piece inviting movement, action and reaction. Inspired by the work of Martin Daughtry, an ethnomusicologist teaching at NYU Abu Dhabi, Kahraman began to experiment with the idea of the body as an organism that can both absorb sound and act as a shield against it. The work is constructed of painted magnets that the viewer can move around, thus participating in the composition, until the magnets are moved again by someone else. With scenes of violence painted onto what appear to be objects of play, Kahraman reveals the body as something mutable and interchangeable. One piece of violence is substituted for another.