Makan invited the public to an open studio to meet the summer residency program participants and to view their ideas and works in progress. The residency was two fold, the first brought together young people active in the arts, they were offered work spaces in Makan for the duration of July. The residency was process oriented and focuses on collaboration and exchange between the participants around the theme of the city Amman and its popular culture symbols and associations. The projects approached subjects such as the lives of cats, concrete structures, the personal interpretations of the city, childhood toys and foreign cultural elements. The participants are Liyan Al-Jabi, Abdullah Khasawnih, Dina Khoury, Rafique Naseriddin and Dana Qabbani.

The second part involved the visiting Argentinean artist Cecilia Mandrile who spent 4 weeks as a resident in Bait Makan. The Open Studio introduces her work entitled Betweening. Unveiling intersections between nomadic practices within different cultures; Betweening proposes a dialogue conceptually based in the improvised poetic encounters among both Gauchos and Bedouins.

Through a visual narrative of 40 photogram-postcards, the artist intended one more portrayal of impermanence. Shaped by the social mistrust towards wanderers, solitary nomad subjects embarked on their own ‘poetic battle’: when moving became the deepest form of entrapment.

 Cecilia Mandrile (Argentina, 1969) received her PhD from Bristol School of Media, Art and Design, UWE, England; an MFA from the University of Maryland, USA and a BFA in Printmaking from the National University of Cordoba, Argentina. She has exhibited widely in important cultural and art institutions throughout the world and has taken part as a visiting artist at  various international residency programs