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In Hayv Kahraman’s vast painting, ‘Entanglements no1’ (2021), all life is suspended Two female figures, weightless though weighed down, are enchained in a series of interlocking intestinal knots Thick dark coils, bigger than a clenched fist, tighter than the developing grip this work has on you, curl around feet and hands Caught and contained in a prison not of their own making, the women cling to the tubular cords, peering at the viewer from behind this oppressive net    Overwhelming in scope and size, ‘Entanglements no1’ commands my attention, luring my gaze into its tense twists and dense depressive curlicues This mesmeric encounter leaves me to ask who is ensnaring who? Am I entangled or are Kahraman’s women? Are they clinging on for dear life or desperately trying to get out? This ambiguity is accentuated so that we, like her women, are forced to confront the troubling position of being psychologically and physiologically stuck Is healing to be found in the digressive digestive passages palpably found and felt in her works? Or are we, too, destined to be trapped in the neurotic networks of our own bodies and minds?   Gut Feelings (2022), a solo exhibition of Kahraman’s paintings and mixed media works at the Mosaic Rooms in London, explores this blurring of inner and outer, of space and form Spread across three galleries, the exhibition disentangles the ties of trauma through a visual synecdoche of thick black cords – at once reminiscent of neurons and the gastrointestinal tract – snaked around and protruding out of female bodies Inspired by neuro-sculpting and psychotherapeutic neurological models espoused by trauma therapists Bessel van der Kolk and Resmaa Menakem, Gut Feelings embraces the intersection between the socio-cultural and the biological, between effects and their affective imprints, between external sites and our internal, somatically-held responses to them    To be ensnared by Kahraman’s work, much like her female figures, is, therefore, to work through the muck of our own gut In all their vertiginous, hypnotic intensity, many of the paintings, like ‘Entanglements no1’, pull us further and further into this visceral psycho-biological journey, pushing us to confront