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<\/a>Born in Iraq in 1981, Kahraman moved to Sweden while a child, and later moved to Italy, before returning to Sweden in 2006 to study at the University of Ume\u00e5, and later moving to the United States. Having taken up oil painting at twelve, she extends her work beyond drawing and painting to sculpture and design, and the stylistic references her works evoke are wide-ranging. Her influences include Persian miniature art, Arabic calligraphy, traditional Japanese prints, art nouveau, and fashion illustrations, and she introduces elements of the uncanny and bizarre as her way of applying \u201cthe background of Islamic art <\/a>and calligraphy to the traditions of western Europe and the Renaissance.\u201d Kahraman\u2019s precise technique and flattened perspective gives her work a minimalist sparseness and a compelling iconic feel, all the more evident in paintings where she employs religious symbolism. In one series, for example she illustrates the scriptural story of the Sacrifice of The Lamb, with the figures recast as women. The title, \u201cCollective Cut,\u201d suggests that the sacrificed lamb \u201cmight also be metaphorically understood in relation to the practice of \u2018honour\u2019 killings.<\/a>\u201d In another painting, unambiguously titled \u201cHonor Killings<\/a>,\u201d she depicts women hanging from a tree, and in another work, she reinterprets matryoshka <\/em>dolls<\/a> through an unveiling process.<\/p>\n Kahraman\u2019s characters are often depicted with elongated necks, representing the archetypical image of the swan, emphasized by the way her figures are often caked in a waxen white color, objectified women with expressionless eyes. As one article puts it,<\/p>\n Her women look like Modiglianis, and have that melancholy serenity<\/a> about them; plaintive, dreamy-eyed and ethereal in their suffering. They are glimpsed behind closed doors, sumptuously arrayed in harems; exquisite creatures wrapped in fine shawls and lounging on rugs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This description highlights the elements of orientalist imagery blended into Kahraman\u2019s use of fairy-tale and surrealism as codes in her metaphorical representations of women\u2019s struggles, making her work comparable to artists such as Laylah Ali and Shirin Neshat. Kahraman describes the latter as an inspiration and as \u201ca pioneer in her field.\u201d Kahraman goes on to say that \u201cIt\u2019s an exciting time for female artists from the Middle East right now. Many are emerging with a powerful visual language and history is being made<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n This raises some of the issues of political agendas, and how artists from the \u201cMiddle East\u201d are often brought into the limelight depending on the international interest in certain facets of their subject matter \u2013 in Kahraman\u2019s case, her exploration of the \u201csubject of female oppression with particular reference to war in the Middle East and specifically in her home land of Iraq.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n Kahrman\u2019s series Marionettes<\/em> could be seen as the embodiment of this theme of women as victims, with their passivity literalized through strings controlling their movements. At the same time, however, Kahraman turns her attention to women as either complicit in or agents of their own repression. In this sense, Kahraman\u2019s work is \u201ca deliberative observation of women being wronged, and women enlisted as agents to perpetuate these wrongs<\/a>.\u201d Many of her works illustrate an obsession with the maintenance of beauty, with voluntary acts of collective grooming verging on the horrific; images of plucking, waxing, and tweezing become extended into acts of physical mutilation, cutting off tongues and branding, to suit the demands of society or tradition, representing \u201cunflinching depictions of women enslaved to the foibles of the beauty myth<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n In her series Pins and Needles<\/em>, Kahraman takes this further, reflecting on the alteration of personal appearance as a children\u2019s game, where bodies becomes mapped through the outlining of areas of flesh to be surgically adjusted. Kahraman relates this to her interest in body alteration practices ranging from botox injections and needles to girdles and corsets to foot-binding and breast irons. As Kahraman puts it, \u201cIt\u2019s about the maintenance of the body and the excesses this can lead to<\/a>\u2026We all do it. It\u2019s a personal dilemma.\u201d In the sense that \u201cwe all do it\u201d Kahraman\u2019s work becomes a broad feminist critique \u201ccreating an excessive cycle of endless outreach towards the unattainable ideal<\/a>\u201d implanted and perpetuated in an unbroken chain.<\/p>\n As Kahraman writes , her work is about the hope of redemption in a world where civilization and degradation are not opposites but often mirror each other. \u201cBorn in a land that is ironically the cradle of civilization and presently the ultimate embodiment of human degradation, Iraq, I have of necessity inherited a host of issues that find expression in my work. Female oppression, honor killings and war continue to claim my attention.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n In addition to the host of issues she has inherited, as an uprooted Iraqi, Kahraman\u2019s work exhibits an interest in immigration and the struggles of the Iraqi diaspora<\/a>. For example in one exhibition titled \u201cWaraq\u201d she focuses on the struggles of assimilation and alienation through paintings which she intended to reproduce as a set of cards. In her project \u201cMalwiya,\u201d she created a hanging installation reproducing an inverted model of the 9th-century spiraling Abbasid Malwiya tower in Iraq. Partially destroyed by war, the tower remains a cultural landmark, and its the 52-meter height is reflected in the project using the deck of 52 cards. In representing it as inverted, tornado-like, Kahraman reflects on the trauma and loss symbolized in the destruction of Iraq\u2019s heritage. The basis of this project goes back to 2007, when Kahraman sent what she referred to as \u201cArchaeology Awareness Playing Cards,\u201d to US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of course, the deck of cards also refers to the \u201cmost-wanted\u201d cards which accompanied the Iraq invasion, juxtaposing the rhetoric of liberation with the dislocation of the migrant figures and the destruction of Iraqi heritage.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/92\/2012\/03\/hanging_sheet-300x186.jpg\")
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