An installation view of “Hayv Kahraman: Look Me in the Eyes” at Frye Art Museum in Seattle. Jueqian Fang

Eyes are everywhere in “Look Me in the Eyes,” the exhibition of artist Hayv Kahraman’s painting, sculpture, and multimedia installations currently on view at the Frye Museum in Seattle: human eyes, detached from human bodies but popping out, fruit-like, on thin stalks of plants; eyes more dully tracking passersby from a trio of looming brick columns surveilling the gallery’s interior; eyes delicately rendered in watercolor but still piercingly directed toward viewers from the uneven textures of the irregularly woven flax fiber paper they are painted on; and eyes that seem to button up the translucent plastic sheets in a striking, free-standing chamber constructed for a multimedia installation.

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Eyes are a long-standing motif for Kahraman, expressive of her experiences as a Kurdish Iraqi relocated to the United States by way of Sweden. Kahraman’s eyes reflect how refugees, both individuals and larger populations, are under constant scrutiny while, at the same time, often socially invisible. Crucially determining each outcome in both art and life, however, are the specific choices and nuances of how and where and in the company of what else the eyes are rendered in their different........

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