Hayv Kahraman

by Wassan Al-Khudhairi

"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...