Hayv Kahraman: Look Me in the Eyes

Hayv Kahraman: Look Me in the Eyes interrogates conditions of migration and immigration in the West. In her largest museum solo presentation to date, Kahraman (born 1981, Baghdad) draws upon her longstanding motif of heavily browed, lidded eyes to expose the simultaneous surveillance and erasure of othered bodies. The exhibition features all new work encompassing paintings, large-scale sculptures, and a deeply personal audio installation.

Kahraman’s artwork balances autobiographical and collective experiences informed by her upbringing as an Iraqi/Kurdish refugee in Sweden. These aspects coalesce within female figures that appear throughout the exhibition—near, but not quite, self-portraits. At times, blank, white eyes offset their faces, speaking to government tracking through iris recognition technology. Meanwhile, disembodied eyes appear among plants highlighting how Western systems of botanical classification support racist hierarchies. Kahraman visually unites these disparate elements through marbling, a centuries-old technique that forces her to relinquish artistic control. The patterns that emerge render each work unique—a potent metaphor for resisting assimilation and its insistence on sameness.