Talk & Conversation
Entanglements - Bodies and Borders.
Organized/hosted by the Mosaic Rooms: a non-profit art gallery, contemporary culture from the Arab world and beyond.
with anthropologist Miriam Ticktin - Inspired by Hayv Kahraman’s paintings.
Location: Tower House, 226 Cromwell Road, London SW5 0SW.
Miriam Ticktin, by using Hayv Kahramans paintings as a starting point of conversation, opens the discussion on the topic of how the complexity of the human body might help rethink the concept of borders, which are part of the ill treatment of migrants and refugees, who are depicted as invasive until this day.
Hayv Kahraman, an Iraqi, who fled the war with her family, discusses the effects of trauma and healing, something she has observed within her community of migrants. As well, all her work is a forever exploration of the embodied experiences of ‘Otherness’. In her paintings she presents the gut, which is a complex twirl of an organ filled with microbes; investigating the process of distress, shock and then renewal. Which helped Ticktin use her work as a perfect example of the complexity and entanglement, nothing is all good or bad, nothing is innocent, but a complex system that needs everything in-between to work and flourish at its best.
Ticktin has a vision that the only way for our survival is to embrace the constant becoming that comes from an interconnected world rather than looking for the specificity of belonging. She uses Covid 19 pandemic as a great example of how there is no such thing as borders, these are made up by politicians for power. No one was fully immune but some were treated better then others based on those made up borders and on what side one happens to be standing in. The idea of my fruits are born from the awkwardness of, not just the mix and blend of geographical identity of “ where are you really from”, but as to our thoughts, our extended understandings that come from our diverseness and different-ness. Those mutant fruits are a representation of the constant morphism of mind, body and soul that happens from our interconnectedness. but the idea of borders, patriotism and the need of belonging has made sure to enhance the feeling of othered-ness for anyone that is ‘different’ …. . Hence the melancholy face, eyes looking away from facing the situation at hand for the sake of belonging and fitting in.
Hayv Kahraman - Gut Feelings
Hayv Kahraman | (no date). Available at: https://hayvkahraman.com/.