Hayv Kahraman was 10 years old when her Kurdish family was forced to flee Iraq during the 1990–91 Gulf War. She turned to art to cope with feelings of isolation while growing up as a refugee in Sweden. In Bab el Sheikh, the painted figures interact with and float over a floor plan derived from traditional Baghdadi domestic architecture—the type Kahraman distantly remembers from her childhood. The artist describes her “inaccessibility... to a place that I used to call home... a place that I’m supposed to be completely a part of but that at this point in my life I don’t understand.” The five female figures here belong to the collective notion of “she.” Says Kahraman: “I am interested in the multitude, not the self. This is not only my story. It can be the story of more than five million people within the Iraqi diaspora or any diaspora.”
