Artists

Bayan Kiwan

Bayan Kiwan (b. 1995, Amman) is an artist based in Amman. Monumentalizing the mundane within the confines of the domestic, Kiwan’s research and practice are driven by questions of place, memory and the everyday. She is currently working with folds, wherein her paintings and ceramics linger on the minor details of intimacy that are severed by the occupation, evidencing the long and pervasive afterlife of dispossession. Exhibitions include Intimate Trespasses, Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Beirut (2026) and heat press fold bend, Brief Histories, New York (2025). Residencies include Mophradat, Brussels (2023). She holds an MFA in Studio Art from Hunter College.

Bayan Kiwan

Artists in Residency: 1st Cohort of 2026

From February 16th to March 9th 2026, Tilal AiR welcomes nine artists from diverse backgrounds, brought together for its February cohort. Selected through the open call launched in November 2025, their projects were reviewed by an international jury composed of Abdramane Kamate, Divya Bhatia, and Rasha Salah. 

Over three weeks, the residency becomes a living laboratory. The artists develop their research in a setting conducive to experimentation and dialogue, alternating between individual work periods, collective gatherings, and exchanges with the local context. This rhythm fosters the deepening of personal approaches while opening spaces for shared reflection. 

Through the diversity of practices — visual arts, writing, performance, and transdisciplinary research — this new cohort embodies the spirit of Tilal AiR: to create rigorous yet caring working conditions where situated narratives, contemporary imaginaries, and relationships with the living intersect and mutually enrich one another. 

Through this program, Tilal AiR reaffirms its commitment to emerging artistic processes and to the international circulation of knowledge, by supporting modes of transmission, collaboration, and local anchoring that extend beyond the timeframe of the residency. 

Artists in Residency: 1st Cohort of 2026