Forced to Flee Two Homes, a Painter Finds a Refuge on Canvas

The painter Hayv Kahraman returned to her bungalow in Altadena, Los Angeles in January, while the Eaton wildfires were still raging, to check on the damage. At one point, a helicopter flew at a low altitude over her block to douse the flames. While her neighbors clapped and cheered in gratitude, Kahraman ran for cover.

Her reaction was sparked by childhood memories of Baghdad, when approaching helicopters raised fears of impending American bombs.

Kahraman (her first name rhymes with Dave) was only 10 years old when she fled Iraq with her mother and sister in 1991, a few months into Operation Desert Storm. They sought asylum in Sweden after a circuitous journey arranged by a smuggler with stops in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; and Frankfurt, Germany. She moved to Italy as a young adult, and then to the United States.

Since she began her career as an artist in the mid-2000s — she is self-taught — her paintings have alluded to the effects of these displacements. But having to flee her home again — this time not forced out by war but by environmental disaster — has put a distinct spin on those longstanding themes. The results of those multiple dislocations are now on view in her Manhattan exhibition, “Ghost Fires,” at the Jack Shainman Gallery in Chelsea, through Oct. 25.

“The wildfires and the memories they triggered put me into a deep depression,” she said in an interview in her current work space in West Covina, a Los Angeles suburb, in August. “After a few weeks, I finally came to the studio. My work usually involves a lot of preparing and thinking and sketching, but now I just picked up a brush. After about 30 minutes a door opened in my brain — every time I put down a brushstroke, I remembered more and more about who I was.”

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