Hayv Kahraman

Hayv Kahraman is an Iraqi artist whose practice encompasses painting, performance and sculpture. Her practice engages with gender identity and the patriarchy that she perceives within her own culture, as well as the Othering of the diasporic subject who has been displaced from their homeland. Kahraman’s paintings are formally beautiful, fragile and subtly painted onto linen or wooden board. But while subjects sometimes hold the gaze of their viewer, they are undeniably subdued and mournful. In recent work, the artist has depicted contorted female figures, their arms and legs akimbo, demonstrating the subjugation and manipulation of their bodies. These works are also a rumination on the simultaneous invisibility and visibility, the dehumanisation and amalgamation of migrants.