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Hayv Kahraman paints graceful and commanding women in intertwining and seemingly impossible poses. They appear like translucent apparitions with inky halos of hair and silken skin rendered delicately in layers of oil paint and adorned in geometric Islamic patterns. Together they form a collective of Middle Eastern women, a motif Kahraman employs to celebrate her cultural identity, once repressed by violent assimilative and colonial forces.

Kahraman draws from her experience as a refugee in exile from her native Iraq, weaving ideas of narrative, memory, and diaspora. The body as object and subject play a central role in her practice, functioning as both a self-portrait and embodiment of a larger whole. Her recent work has addressed the devasting impact on vulnerable communities as a result of war, the parallels between medical terminology and military metaphors, and ecological disasters.