Biography

Hayv Kahraman uses the visual languages of the Italian Renaissance, and the figurative style of traditional Japanese and Islamic art in intricately detailed paintings of women as they carry out the rituals of daily or celebratory life.

Intrinsic to Kahraman's work is the aesthetic and conceptual fusion of cultures that is characteristic of the increasingly global and multicultural experience of life today. Exploring issues of both gender and the empowerment of women, Kahraman's subversive figurative narratives reflect societal concerns and defy doctrinal behavioural patterns. The figures are semi-realistically rendered symbolic representations of the modern platonic form of the feminine, an ambiguous existence on the cusp of dejection and defiance.

Included in the 9th Sharjah Biennial was Domesticated Marionettes, a series of paintings created between 2008-09.

Kahraman's work has been seen widely in solo and group exhibitions including Saatchi Gallery, London (2009), Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin (2009), an Artist Project at Volta, New York (2009) and the Sharjah Biennial (2009). A graduate of the Accademia di Arte e Design di Firenze, Italy and the University of Umea, Sweden, Hayv Kahraman was born in Baghdad, 1981 and currently lives and works in Phoenix, USA.

October 2010