01 Painting, Middle East Artists, Hayv Kahraman's Cleaning, with Footnotes part #68

Hayv Kahraman

Cleaning, c. 2009

Oil on canvas

52 × 86 in | 132 × 218.4 cm

Private collection

This work is part of a series of large canvases titled Domesticated Marionettes where the representation of the mundane life of an ordinary housewife is highlighted and the monotony of daily chores including that of sexual fulfillment is the focus.

These women assume a false sense of sovereignty and the delusion of being queens in their homes. More on Domesticated Marionettes

Hayv Kahraman’s oil-on-linen paintings depict women in both peaceful repose and in unsettling contortions. Embracing material exploration, the Iraqi-born artist has sliced into her canvases, incorporated acoustic foam amid the linen, painted on wood, made sculpture, sketched, and choreographed performance. Kahraman draws on disparate influences including Renaissance painting, Persian miniature painting, Art Nouveau, and her own experience as a woman in the Iraqi diaspora. Kahraman studied at the Florence Academy of Fine Arts and Umeå University in Sweden. She has exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, London, Dubai, and beyond. Her work belongs to several collections including the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Rubell Family Collection, the Barjeel Art Foundation in Sharjah, and the Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha. More on this painting

Hayv Kahraman is an Iraqi artist born in 1981. At the age of 11, her family left Baghdad during the Gulf War and settled in Sweden for several years, where her status of refugee became a catalytic experience for her artistic practice. Having studied graphic design at the Accademia di Arte e Design di Firenze, Italy, Kahraman uses a variety of media including sculpture, drawing and painting to address difficult issues relative to gender inequalities, war and the migrant experience. Channeling refined aesthetics inspired from Islamic arts, Art Nouveau and Japanese paintings to confront the viewer with controversial scenes, the artist engages with the notion of femininity in Middle Eastern cultures. Her approach to gender roles and female identity encapsulates how women are persecuted in their own culture through systematic submission to the male gaze, physicality and politics. More on Hayv Kahraman

Please visit my other blogs: Art Collector, Mythology, Marine Art, Portrait of a Lady, The Orientalist, Art of the Nude and The Canals of Venice, Middle East Artists, 365 Saints, 365 Days, and Biblical Icons, also visit my Boards on Pinterest and my art stores at  deviantart and Aaroko

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01 Painting, Middle East Artists, Mania Akbari's Untitled 2008, with Footnotes, part #66

Mania Akbari (Iran, born 1974)

Untitled, c. 2008

Diptych, digital print on canvas

each panel 180 x 40cm (70 7/8 x 15 3/4in)

Private collection

Sold for US$8,400 in October 2010

Mania Akbari (September 1974) is an Iranian filmmaker, artist, writer and actress whose works explore women's rights, marriage, sexual identity, disease and body image. Her style, in contrast to the long tradition of melodrama in Iranian cinema, is rooted in the visual arts and autobiography. Because of the taboo themes frankly discussed in her films and her opposition to censorship, she is considered one of the most controversial filmmakers in Iran.[3] As an actress, she is best known for playing the lead role in Abbas Kiarostami's Ten (2002).

Akbari was born in 1974 in Tehran, Iran. Her artistic activities, as a painter, started in 1991 when she took part in various exhibitions in Iran, as well as abroad. She was later exposed to cinema, working as a cinematographer and assistant director on documentary films.

In 2007, Akbari was diagnosed with breast cancer, her struggle with the disease becoming one of the key themes of her films and art works.

From 2007 to 2010, Akbari worked on numerous photography-based works that were featured in various galleries around the world, while she kept making documentary and fiction films until 2011, when during production of her film, From Tehran to London, members of her crew were arrested by Iranian authorities for filming without official permission. Scared she too might be imprisoned, Akbari fled Tehran for London.

Since settling in London, various international retrospectives of Akbari's films have drawn attention to her cinema, among which retrospectives at the BFI, the Oldenburg International Film Festival and the Danish Film Institute are the most notable. More on Mania Akbari 

Please visit my other blogs: Art Collector, Mythology, Marine Art, Portrait of a Lady, The Orientalist, Art of the Nude and The Canals of Venice, Middle East Artists, 365 Saints, 365 Days, and Biblical Icons, also visit my Boards on Pinterest and my art stores at  deviantart and Aaroko

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01 Painting, Middle East Artists, Inji Efflatoun's Mabrouka (She who is Blessed), with Footnotes #70

Inji Efflatoun (Egypt, 1924-1989)

Mabrouka (She who is Blessed), c. 1953

Oil on wood panel

80 x 61cm (31 1/2 x 24in).

Private collection

Estimated for £30,000 - £50,000 in May 2025

Painted in 1953, in the immediate aftermath of Egypt's revolution, Mabrouka stands among Inji Efflatoun's most powerful early works: a poignant portrayal of maternal hardship and quiet resistance, rendered in her deeply empathetic figurative style. The title, Mabrouka, holds dual meaning, it may refer to the name of the central woman, or serve as a more abstract invocation, "she who is blessed." In either case, the irony is stark and deliberate. The mother sits barefoot, breastfeeding her infant, her face cast in exhaustion, one hand pressed to her brow. Beside her, a young girl clings, her eyes wide and wary, watching the viewer as much as the world outside the frame. More on this painting

Inji Efflatoun was born in 1924 to a wealthy family from Cairo’s French-speaking aristocracy. Her mother, a divorcee, opened the first tailoring shop run by a woman. Inji Efflatoun received a strict catholic education before studying at the French Lycée in Cairo, where she became familiar with Marxism. She started painting very early on and, from the age of fifteen, took classes with Kamel el-Telmissany, one of the representatives of Egyptian surrealism. The painter introduced her to the “Art et Liberté” (“Art and Freedom”) movement, a group of artists and intellectuals of communist and anti-imperialist orientation which made use of surrealist creative processes – an influence perceptible in the artist’s earlier output.

Inji Efflatoun quickly asserted her political stance in “Art et Liberté” by engaging in intense militant activity for the better part of fifteen years as from 1940. She was one of the first women to study in the arts department of the University of Cairo, and in 1945 she took part in the creation of the Ligue des jeunes femmes des universities et des instituts (League of young women in universities and institutes), which promoted left-wing, anti-colonialist politics, and campaigned for gender equality. Working for a short while as a teacher and as a journalist, she published several manifestos and, with a small group of women intellectuals and militants, participated in numerous actions in Egypt and Europe in favour of women’s rights and peace. More on Inji Efflatoun

Please visit my other blogs: Art Collector, Mythology, Marine Art, Portrait of a Lady, The Orientalist, Art of the Nude and The Canals of Venice, Middle East Artists, 365 Saints, 365 Days, and Biblical Icons, also visit my Boards on Pinterest and my art stores at  deviantart and Aaroko

Images are copyright of their respective owners, assignees or others. Some Images may be subject to copyright

I don't own any of these images - credit is always given when due unless it is unknown to me. if I post your images without your permission, please tell me.

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