Iraqi-Kurdish Artist In The Third Art Gallery Dubai

The Third Line’s fifth solo show with Hayv Kahraman the LA-based Iraqi-Kurdish artist fills both gallery spaces with a series of new paintings and drawings

Iranart:This artworks continue her ongoing exploration into the effects of trauma on the body, and the role of the gut in our healing process.

Kahraman’s practice is heavily guided by her refugee experience, with notions of gender and trauma providing consistent themes through her work. Recently, she has directed her research towards neuroscience, human immunology and ‘neurosculpting’ – the ability to restructure the neural pathways in our brain through the gut microbiome – and how they specifically relate to an ultimate goal of healing and repairing trauma.

Exposed and tangled digestive organs act as a visual metaphor of unravelling the restorative process. And by incorporating into her paintings the lilac dye from torshi – fermented beetroot served in Middle Eastern cuisine which is believed to improve mental wellbeing via the gut, and jars of which are on view in the exhibition – Kahraman affirms that the microbial world is verification of our acceptance of difference. Physically painting with torshi serves as an allegory to how we sentient beings live in symbiosis with the ‘other’.

To 24 March.

Above: Hayv Kahraman, Brain frog 2 (2022)