Eminent artist, Hayv Kahraman, returns to The Third Line with new work that tackles the complex relationships between gender and identity constructs; geopolitical and physiological boundaries; and, the perception of self vis-à-vis the demands of conformity within society.

Six panels depicting women extracting a cross sectional slice of their own bodies encompass the gallery space. Expanding on her previous series, Kahraman’s depictions of these women personify a hybrid identity hinting to the affinity of dismembered bodies with fragmented geographical locations. This somewhat crude act of detaching a limb is also reminiscent of a violent uprooting and is revealed materialistically in the work. Manifested through the artist’s heterogeneous use of wood and rawhide, the artist forces an unnatural but seamless coexistence between mixed materials.

First explored in her work Quasicorporeal, Kahraman’s inspiration stems from her personal story and own segmented body scan, which she then applies throughout this body of work. Within this framework, she also includes two rawhide light-boxes in the show that depict a cross-sectioned anatomical slice. The violent and nonchalant aspect of plane sectioning a frozen cadaver speaks to a similar detachment and separation that occurs within people of a diaspora or in exile.

Kahraman further extrapolates this point through a 3 dimensional sculpture, namely the Möbius body. The structure, of no beginning and no end, aims to deconstruct binary notions of mind and body, male and female, inside and outside; where hierarchy is created by one element inherently becoming the subordinate of the other.