Daniel Heyman

Daniel Heyman is an American printmaker, painter, and human-rights-engaged artist whose work since the mid-2000s has been principally concerned with the testimony of vulnerable communities — Iraqi survivors of detention at Abu Ghraib prison, U.S. military sexual assault survivors, Native Americans on North Dakota reservations, and others. He has taught printmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) since 2004 and has been a Guggenheim Fellow.

Heyman holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from Dartmouth College and the University of Pennsylvania. His best-known work is the Amman and Istanbul Portfolios (2006), a body of drypoint and chine-collé prints made from 2006 onward in Amman (Jordan) and Istanbul (Turkey) where he travelled with American legal teams interviewing former Abu Ghraib detainees. As detainees gave their testimony to attorneys, Heyman drew their faces directly onto copper plates and surrounded each portrait with the testimony — translated phrase by phrase by an interpreter — etched in his own hand. The resulting Amman Portfolio (suite of 8 drypoints, 27 × 22.5 inches each, edition of 30) and Istanbul Portfolio (suite of 10 drypoints with chine-collé, 22 × 15.25 inches each, edition of 12) became one of the most cited bodies of contemporary American political portraiture.

Following the Iraqi-detainee project, Heyman extended his testimony method into related American contexts. The Amman/Istanbul work led to subsequent series on military sexual assault survivors (Wounded, 2010, etching, 144 × 24 inches, edition 8), American photographers (When Photographers are Blinded, Eagles' Wings are Clipped, 2011, etching/aquatint/drypoint/wood relief, monumental 145 × 167.5 inches), and seasonal autobiographical work (Summer: Artist Sleeps, 2010; Fall: Artist Eats Pho, 2011; Winter: Artist Engages and Spring: Artist Contemplates (Inheritance), large-scale plaster-tile and wood-veneer multi-panel works that fold together printed surface, sculpture, and personal narrative).

In the past decade Heyman has consciously moved away from the overtly political work and toward studio-scale prints exploring inheritance, mortality, and personal place. Recent prints in his current Cade Tompkins Projects (Providence) catalogue include Rock (2019, relief and drypoint on cotton paper, 31 × 36 inches), the It Was Such A Joy: Portrait of Leigh Jeanotte reduction-woodcut/letterpress series (2015–16, 54 × 35 inches each, edition 18), and the artist book Sing with a Lovely Voice (2007, mokuhanga and digital print combined with hand-bookbinding, edition 12) — the mokuhanga element of which signals his late engagement with Japanese water-based woodblock alongside his primary intaglio practice.

Heyman's prints are held by major American museums and university collections, including the Yale University Art Gallery, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Brown University Bell Gallery (where 'I am Sorry It is Difficult to Start' was exhibited), the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and others. He was a 2010 Guggenheim Fellow in the Fine Arts category. As Visiting and then Senior Critic in Printmaking at RISD since 2004 he has been a steady mentoring presence within American MFA-level printmaking education.