The Cake Makers  

Oil on canvas, 90 cm x 115 cm (35 in x 45 in), 2025

A woman watches the news, which reflects from the edge of the TV screen onto a surface in the room. There is a flour spill, and cakes with birthday candles in the back. Maroun Tomb’s original title The Cake Makers implied a domestic scene to Kiwan, whose works often center on this recurring setting and intimate slice-of-life moments. 

Bayan Kiwan is an artist based in Brooklyn, New York. 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 minor details of intimacy that evidence the long afterlife of dispossession. Exhibitions include, a solo show entitled heat press fold bend, Brief Histories, New York (2025); Blind Date 2.0, Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Hamburg (2023) and Beirut (2024); Familiar Like Skin, Transmitter Gallery, Brooklyn (2023).