Rachel Mohawege Having moved to Austria at a young age and with a tourism management as well as history of art background, my love for the arts has always been at the core of what I do. My grandfather, calligrapher and artist in Lebanon, was my source of inspiration, there I learned later the technique of gilding, which has greatly influenced my work. I have been working for many years in addition to my position, as an art curator in an international Institution for Development, designed for the passing brand Shalmauer and wanted to use the arts as a means to create awareness in social issues, discomfort with the aim to create a healing closure. Having been brought up in Europe but with Middle Eastern roots and North African influence as Tunisia was for many years a third home, I am inspired by the East meets West fusion that I try to bring in my work. I find inspiration in everything, life, love, spirituality, literature, Arabic calligraphy, nature, fashion, etc. Being a woman and mother, I developed a focus on the Peaceful power of the woman in time and space, who, for centuries in many cultures could only express herself through her eyes, mirrors of the soul, radiating her light and sensuality through her deep straight gaze. This has become today's unbendable piercing gaze, defeating the patterns of the past. My paintings are an ode to femininity and the modern woman, the inner Goddesses, taking their space in rights, life and society and looking at the world with wide open eyes. Those portraits should inspire to keep that nature given strong feminine identity.