Hayv Kahraman Solo Show Opens in January at The Moody Center For The Arts

The Moody Center for the Arts presents the work of Hayv Kahraman (b. 1981, Baghdad, Iraq), opening January 12, 2024. The Foreign in Us, on view through May 11, 2024, is the artist’s first solo exhibition in Texas. The presentation includes new and recent works informed by the artist’s Iraqi-Kurdish heritage and experience as a refugee while highlighting her research-driven practice. Through her profound imagery and investigation into the decolonization of the body and nature, Kahraman challenges fear and apprehension of otherness, advocating instead for compassion and acceptance.

“We’re honored to present Hayv Kahraman’s recent work at the Moody,” notes Alison Weaver, Suzanne Deal Booth Executive Director. “Her powerful imagery, deeply informed by her personal history, intersects with the fields of bioscience, social history, and public policy in ways we hope will invite conversations across the campus and community.”

In the artist's unique compositions, questions inspired by immunology and microbiology, as well as history, are approached through the lens of the othered body, often represented in contortionist postures as a means to interrogate normative gender constructions and racial stereotypes that can adversely affect migrant groups. This conceptual focus and innovative practice are presented through a selection of more than forty paintings and drawings from public and private collections in the United States and abroad. In addition to several large-scale canvases, the exhibition will feature intimate drawings that demonstrate the artist’s meticulous draftsmanship and mastery of line and color.  

“I’m thrilled to bring these bodies of work together at the Moody. They are at once extremely personal yet heavily researched and mark a shift in the trajectory of my work,” said Hayv Kahraman. “To have these pieces in dialogue will elucidate the commonalities between the series and perhaps create additional divergent and speculative ideas.” 

Notably, the figures that Kahraman depicts, despite being based on her own body, are an expression of a collective experience rather than an individual one, and challenge Western ideals about beauty canons and body policies while calling for a decolonization of the body. The violence conveyed through their twisted limbs alludes to the pain of diasporic life and psyche. These scenes are drawn from memories of the artist’s own history—from the trauma of displacement at a young age to reconnecting with her Kurdish heritage—and inspire the visually captivating compositions that connect her recent work to themes of tolerance and healing.

Frauke V. Josenhans, the curator of the exhibition, observes that “Kahraman’s entrancing works reference different pictorial traditions—from Persian calligraphy and Florentine Mannerism to Asian calligraphy and Ebru marbling— as a means of challenging our views of what we consider ‘other’ and unveiling underlying biases in our society. Kahraman’s female figures confront the viewer, telling stories about violence and rejection, while at the same time offering a path to healing.”