Hayv Kahraman, Binding (detail), 2021. Oil paint on linen; 99 x 78 in. Denver Art Museum: Funds from Contemporary Collectors' Circle with additional support from Vicki & Kent Logan, Craig Ponzio, Bryon Adinoff & Trish Holland, Kathryn & David Birnbaum, Catherine Dews Edwards & Philip Edwards, and Drs. Ellen & Morris Susman, 2023.261. © Hayv Kahraman
Logan Lecture: Hayv Kahraman
Hayv Kahraman considers the body as a porous membrane, influenced and shaped by exchanges with microbial, ecological, and material worlds. Multiple conceptual threads convergence in her interdisciplinary practice, engaging concepts from the natural and biosciences as well as theories of more-than-human entanglement.
Working primarily in painting, Kahraman depicts graceful and powerful 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 geometrically patterned clothing. Together, Kahraman’s figures operate simultaneously as self-portraits and as members of a collective body, broadening our understanding of what it means to be human. Through their stylized forms and choreographed, ritual-like gestures, her figures evoke practices of care, transformation, and renewal, while opening space for queer and neurodivergent ways of perceiving and inhabiting the world.
Drawing from her experience as an Iraqi émigré, first to Europe and later to the United States, Kahraman reflects on the embodied complexities of displacement and cultural translation. She examines issues of racialized gender, body politics, migrant consciousness, and the marginal spaces of diasporic life. Her recent work has explored topics such as histories of colonial botany, microbial connections between the human gut and brain, the parallels between medical terminology and military metaphors, and ecological disasters.
Kahraman joins Rory Padeken, Vicki and Kent Logan Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, in a discussion about her interdisciplinary practice.
This event is part of the 2025-26 Logan Lecture Series.
Artist Bio
Born in 1981 in Baghdad, Iraq, Hayv Kahraman studied at Accademia di arte e design di Firenze, Florence, Italy in 2005 and at University of Umeå, Sweden in 2006. Kahraman has received numerous awards, including the Excellence in Cultural Creativity from Global Thinkers Forum Awards in 2014. She has had solo exhibitions at Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis; Frye Art Museum, Seattle; ICA San Francisco; Moody Center for the Arts, Rice University, Houston; Savannah College of Art and Design, Georgia; and Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture & Design, Honolulu. Her work is in the permanent collections of Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama; Denver Art Museum; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Minneapolis Institute of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; and San José Museum of Art. Kahraman lives and works in Los Angeles.
© Hayv Kahraman. Courtesy of the Artist, Pilar Corrias, London, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, and Vielmetter Los Angeles.
© Hayv Kahraman. Courtesy of the Artist, Pilar Corrias, London, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, and Vielmetter Los Angeles.
© Hayv Kahraman. Courtesy of the Artist, Pilar Corrias, London, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, and Vielmetter Los Angeles.
© Hayv Kahraman. Courtesy of the Artist, Pilar Corrias, London, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, and Vielmetter Los Angeles.
© Hayv Kahraman. Courtesy of the Artist, Pilar Corrias, London, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, and Vielmetter Los Angeles.
© Hayv Kahraman. Courtesy of the Artist, Pilar Corrias, London, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, and Vielmetter Los Angeles.
© Hayv Kahraman. Courtesy of the Artist, Pilar Corrias, London, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, and Vielmetter Los Angeles.
© Hayv Kahraman. Courtesy of the Artist, Pilar Corrias, London, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, and Vielmetter Los Angeles.
Since 2007, the Logan Lecture Series at the Denver Art Museum has presented talks by over 120 contemporary artists. Organized by the Modern and Contemporary Art department, the series is made possible through the generous support of Vicki and Kent Logan.
