Object Details
Artist
Hayv Kahraman
Date
2018
Medium
Oil on wood
Dimensions
72 × 48 × 2 inches (182.9 × 121.9 × 5.1 cm)
Credit Line
Acquired through the Jarett F. Wait, Class of 1980, and Younghee Kim-Wait Endowment for Contemporary Islamic and Middle Eastern Arts, and through the generosity of the Donors to the Contemporary Art Fund, with additional support from the George and Mary Rockwell Fund
Object
Number
2019.033
Hayv Kahraman creates figurative paintings that depict women, alone or in groups marked by similarit(…)
Hayv Kahraman creates figurative paintings that depict women, alone or in groups marked by similarities, with glowing pale skin and inky black hair, mashing up a variety of styles. Against the background of her own story of migration, having spent her childhood in war-torn Iraq and her adolescence in Sweden as a refugee, Kahraman’s paintings confront themes of involuntary exile and violence, specifically against women. The figure that she paints over and over again represents herself, as she grapples with her own history of displacement and trauma. With paintings like Boob Gold, Kahraman situates her work within a complicated discourse about the female body as object and subject, engaging issues of dignity versus victimhood. Exposing her breasts while refusing to lower her gaze, the woman in Kahraman’s painting engages in an act of self-empowerment to address a systemic problem. “How can situations of suffering and violence be portrayed,” anthropologist Miriam Ticktin has asked, “without erasing the dignity of those who suffer, without representing them as victims, as uncivilized and unable to care for themselves.” (“how the light gets in,” curated by Andrea Inselmann and presented at the Johnson Museum September 7-December 8, 2019)
