User:Okeeffeafklint/Hayv Kahraman

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She had thorough training in graphic design and is a believer in symmetry and composition (Mohseni) She studied graphic design in Florence.

Themes in her work:

1)Kahraman says that her experiences with war and being a refugee maybe related to the source of violence in her work. (Mohseni) For example, she had oversized playing cards which symbolizes 'fractured identities' because of war and population displacement.

2)She has an international bent to her work. She focuses on border and boundaries persistently being broken down. (Mohseni) She believes you develop who you are based on your location. Therefore when there are boundaries and borders that are broken, your identity becomes broken as well.

3)They have a global perspective. For example, "Marionettes" addresses the submissive role of women doing chores such as cleaning. (Mohseni)

Techniques in her work:

- science and geometry are important in her work especially the use of pattern. for example, decorative textile patterns. (Mohseni)

> she has used science to take images of her body to deconstruct and reconstruct it. The goal was to be able to view her body from different perspectives. (Mohseni)

- her life is impacted by global events (Bryant)

- bc of her origin and gender she has been well suited around the world in women in Arab world or "contemporary approaches to islamic artistic traditions" (1) (Bryant)

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techniques: Chinese ink painting, Japanese woodblocks, Russian nestling dolls

is an Iraqi-American-Swedish artist of Kurdish descent, who was born in Baghdad and fled to Sweden with family during the Gulf War, studied in Florence, and is currently based in Los Angeles. She is primarily a painter. Hayv Kahraman’s work explores the transformation of agency undergone by the colonial subject. Her figures are placed in seemingly impossible poses akin to circus performers or contortionists, attracting the voyeuristic gaze through an eroticisation and fetishisation of the ‘other’. Yet their faces stare plainly back at us; the gaze is tolerated. This interplay of gazes allows for the subjects to be both looked at and to look back at, subverting the coloniser’s power, and calling attention to the dehumanisation of the colonised. Kahraman’s subjects, like immigrants and refugees, occupy a space of both invisibility and visibility - they are relegated to certain subsections of society and ignored, while remaining naturally visible.Though her figures are vulnerable, they present themselves deliberately, showing that otherness is presented as a construct and not a given.