When did you start to become interested in art? Do you have memories of an art culture at home, or in the wider sphere of Baghdad, where you grew up? I’ve been attracted to art making as far back as my memories can take me. I grew up in a secular Baghdad where my...
I remember clinging to my mother in the basement of my uncle’s house in Suleymania in northern Iraq. I remember my relatives curled around candles, waiting for the loud noises outside to stop. Despite my fear, a sense of solidarity prevailed: I was surrounded by my...
Hayv Kahraman’s latest body of work offers an acute and eloquent portrayal of the violence of sound. Brooke Lynn McGowan visits the artist at her studio and learns how trauma can ignite music, painting and reconciliation ‘The rest is done by outcry’...
The trigger was this sonic memory I have of growing up in Baghdad… the sound of the sirens. Whenever we’d be hit by air raids and bombs, etcetera, the siren would start. This was during the Gulf War in Iraq, so in 1991. Come to think of it, I’ve heard that...
Without knowing the Arabic language (and, in this case, the particular dialect spoken and written in Iraq), I am afraid we will read the new paintings by Hayv Kahraman from a rather superficial, perhaps only aesthetic and formal, understanding of her rich and nuanced...
