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Artist Talk with Hayv Kahraman

Talks and panels / 901 Club

Artist Talk with Hayv Kahraman

Past event

Please join us for an in-depth conversation between Hayv Kahraman, whose major solo exhibition Look Me in the Eyes is on view through May 19th, and ICA SF Founding Director Ali Gass. Learn more about Kahraman’s research process, conceptual inspirations, and techniques.

Look Me in the Eyes is Hayv Kahraman’s largest solo museum exhibition to date. Alongside new paintings and never-before-seen large-scale sculptures constructed in layers of marbled brick with painted eyes, Kahraman introduced her first ever audio installation—a deeply personal work about her family’s refugee experience. Look Me in the Eyes weaves intricate layers of her personal explorations and historical research, challenging assumptions of the “other" and exploring the tension between hypervisibility and invisibility.

This program is open to all 901 Club Members. Not a 901 Club Member? Join today!

Hayv Kahraman was born in Baghdad, Iraq in 1981 and now lives and works in Los Angeles. Kahraman’s recent solo exhibitions include The Foreign in Us, Moody Center for the Arts, Houston, Texas (2024); The Touch of Otherness, SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA (2022); Gut Feelings, The Mosaic Rooms, London, UK (2022); Acts of Reparation, CAM St Louis; Audible Inaudible, Joslyn Museum of Art, Omaha; Sound Wounds, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; Gendering Memories of Iraq—a Collective Performance which has been staged at CAM St Louis, Birmingham Museum of Art, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and Duke University; Reweaving Migrant Inscriptions, Jack Shainman, New York; Audible Inaudible, The Third Line, Dubai; How Iraqi are you?, Jack Shainman, New York.

Recent group exhibitions include Ten Thousand Suns, Sydney Biennale 2024, Sydney (2024); The inescapable interweaving of all lives, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf (2023); O Quilombismo, Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Berlin, Germany (2023); In the Heart of Another Country: The Diasporic Imagination in the Sharjah Art Foundation Collection, Deichtorhallen Hamburg (2022); Our whole, unruly selves, San José Museum of Art, San José (2021); Reflections: Contemporary Art of the Middle East and North Africa, British Museum, London (2021); New Time: Art and Feminisms in the 21st Century, Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley (2021); Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA (2019); ICA Boston (2019); and MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA (2019).

Kahraman was shortlisted for the 2011 Jameel Prize at the Victoria and Albert Museum and has received the award Excellence in Cultural Creativity, Global Thinkers Forum.

Related Exhibition

January 16–May 19, 2024

Look Me in the Eyes

Hayv Kahraman