During her 6 week residency, Shahira Issa researched Amman’s cultural institutions in tandem with the history of the city’s urban growth and recent regeneration projects.  Towards the end of her residency, Issa presented a work-in-progress, entitled An Encounter with the Museum Collection. In this work, she traces the shift in the tension between artistic activity and the desire for recognition on the one hand, and notions of culture that inform the circulation of work on the other. Based on her research, Issa constructed a setting in which she re-imagines the biography of the city through an abstract encounter with the collection of an art museum.