Iraqi American Artist Hayv Kahraman Is 'Building An Army Of Fierce Women'
Repeating female images, geometric 3D wood cutouts and acts of violence: They're the semi-autobiographical signatures of a refugee, a survivor of war and domestic violence, and a busy artist.
Hayv Kahraman's art was shaped by the many worlds in which she's lived and traumas she's endured.
She was born in Baghdad 38 years ago, the daughter of a university English professor and a librarian for the United Nations. She was a child during the Iran-Iraq War and the first Gulf War.
"I would look out my bedroom window and see a rain of air-raid bombs," she says. "They looked like fireworks." The air-raid sirens terrified her: "They are so loud and when they happen, you know that you might actually die any minute. It shakes you to the core."
When she was 11, Kahraman and her family smuggled themselves out of Iraq with false passports. They became refugees
