Hayv Kahraman’s practice treats painting as a conjuring space—part memory work, part ritual construction. Her compositions often center female figures engaged in enigmatic, talismanic actions, where narrative logic loosens into dreamlike cycles of transformation.
Material choices are central to the spell. In Libations, for example, Kahraman builds surfaces with handmade flax and marbling techniques, letting texture carry meaning alongside imagery. She draws on Sufi thought and Arabic mysticism—incorporating forms like magic squares and buried inscriptions—to connect personal displacement with broader cosmologies.
Born in Baghdad and now based in Los Angeles, Kahraman returns to themes of loss, migration, and the liminal “in-between” as a lived condition. Her work seeks imaginative survival: painting becomes an alchemical means to give substance to what’s unseen, turning grief and disaster into protective, wonder-charged artifacts.
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