The mind’s recollections

The mind's recollections

By Rand Dalgamouni
AMMAN - The mind's recollections of cities, landmarks and people, in all their haziness and clarity are visualised by artist Rawan Kakish in her latest exhibition at Foresight32 Art Gallery.

Titled "City | Thirdspace", Kakish's exhibition is influenced by the concept of "third place", which is used by urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg to refer to social environments other than the "first place", the home, and "second place", the workplace.

Third places are, according to Oldenburg, important for civil society, facilitating creative interaction and providing informal meeting places to sustain community life.

In her artworks, Kakish manages to provide an intimate look at the importance of the city. Her collages are more of the mind's residual image of "third places", rather than an actual depiction of places in the city.

Using mixed media to form collages out of pieces from magazines, newspapers and wood, the artist subtly tweaks images of buildings and streets to hark back to the city's history and add some of her personal impressions.

With an artwork, titled "King Faisal Street", Kakish, who has a bachelor's degree in architecture and design, portrays one of downtown Amman's central streets from a unique point of view.

A closer look at the artwork reveals newspaper scraps referring to the history of downtown's landmarks placed within buildings, and an ornamental pattern that recurs in several other artworks, placed in unexpected spots, in place of streets and on the sides of buildings.

Kakish's unusual take on collages enriches what could have been regular scenes of urban landscapes, surprising the viewer with scraps from newspaper and magazine articles in the skyline and at the end of stairs and doorways.

In one piece, a street where a group of men are seen stopping at a newspaper stand is made entirely out of newspaper writings.

Three artworks depicting an old man working on a sewing machine are created out of several woodblocks that vary in their colours and imagery, producing a rich, three-dimensional portrayal that goes beyond the overall image to emulate the mental interpretation of the depicted scene.

Each woodblock is an artwork in its own right, with every piece loaded with textures and layers, as if the artworks impart the mental image of the scene rather than the scene itself.

The collection of works, titled "Hybrid | Thirdspace", merge Amman with New York to produce a more personal "third place" from the artist's recollections.

Kakish spent some time in New York, studying art at New York University and the School of Visual Arts.

In this collection, "the Big Apple's" skyscrapers spring up from Amman's streets, with the Empire State building towering over the capital's buildings.

The artworks in "Thirdspace" surpass the physical dimension of the urban environment to include the personal and the psychological.

They are not mere depictions of places, but a reflection of what these places mean to the artist and the memories they left in her mind.

The artworks are on display until July 31.

29 July 2011