Hayv Kahraman

Vielmetter Los Angeles presents works by Hayv Kahraman.

The viewing room highlights new works by Hayv Kahraman from her recent exhibition Look Me in the Eyes which debuted at the ICA SF in early 2024 and traveled to the Frye Art Museum. Kahraman and her family were directly impacted by the Eaton Fire in Los Angeles this January, sales support the artist in navigating a path forward toward stability.

Kahraman's work has always drawn on themes of displacement, exile, migration, and resilience. Her art is a testament to strength and perseverance–having survived the Gulf War, becoming a refugee, and an asylum seeker, Kahraman has moved from the Middle East to Europe to the United States. Her work transforms her deeply personal experience into universal themes of identity, place, belonging, surveillance, and borders.

The works from Look Me in the Eyes repeat the motif of eyes and hands, speaking to the parts of the body used to track and identify individuals.

"Kahraman's signature heavily browed and lidded eyes; botanical imagery; and a newly explored marbling technique. Eyes follow the viewer throughout the exhibition. They hauntingly appear without irises in figures' faces, speaking to the horrors of government tracking through iris recognition technology and allowing these women a chance of escaping surveillance. Elsewhere, eyes appear fragmented from their bodies on plants or sculptures, meeting the viewer's gaze and implicating us into the work, and thus into these systems of social and political power structures."

—ICA SF

Kahraman states "I've grown to embrace my rootlessness and see myself as someone who floats in and out, akin to a gentle wave. When I bought my first home in Altadena this wave somehow became more anchored. Possibly more rhythmic and less sporadic. I loved this feeling. And this is what I want to find again. A rhythmic wave."