Nabad opens an exhibition of paintings and collages by young Jordanian architect and painter, Rawan Kakish. In her second solo exhibition, “Testimony of Presence,” Rawan Kakish presents a new collection of portraits and cityscapes. Using photographs of elderly people as inspiration for her portraits, and archival photographs of Amman as a background to her mixed media collages, the artist bears witness to the past by capturing spontaneous moments in time and infusing them with warmth and nostalgia. Each deeply-lined face of the men and women depicted in her portraits seems to tell a life story. Rawan uses milk paint, which lends a rich and translucent finish to her paintings, while the recycled wooden pallets and metal backgrounds give them a distinctly contemporary, organic quality. The old and traditional serves as a basis for the new and  innovative.

Born in 1983, Rawan Kakish graduated with a B.A. in Architecture and Design from the Jordan University of Science and Technology in 2006. Between 2006 and 2007, she worked as an architect with Faris and Faris and Symbiosis Designs, two prominent Jordanian architectural firms. Meanwhile, she took local art classes to cultivate and refine her artistic skills. In 2008, Rawan enrolled at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York City and at New York University (NYU), where she studied drawing, sculpture, collage, printmaking and animation. Back in Amman, Rawan held her first solo exhibition in 2011 and participated in several workshops and group shows. She currently lives and works in Kuwait

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