Mireille Eid (Astore) (Beirut, 1961) ( ar, ميراي عيد اسطوري) is an artist and a writer. She left

Beirut Beirut, french: Beyrouth is the capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, which makes it the third-largest city in the Levant region. The city is situated on a peninsula at the midpoint o ...

during the

Lebanese civil war The Lebanese Civil War ( ar, الحرب الأهلية اللبنانية, translit=Al-Ḥarb al-Ahliyyah al-Libnāniyyah) was a multifaceted armed conflict that took place from 1975 to 1990. It resulted in an estimated 120,000 fatalities a ...

in 1975 to live in Melbourne, Australia. She studied the Sciences at the

University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb no ...

where she graduated before becoming a full-time artist and writer. Influenced by continental philosophy, her art draws on autobiographical notions of representation and the '' unheimlich''; where the conscious intersects with the unconscious. Through her art and her writing she "explores human emotions" and "asks what it is to be human". Mireille Eid (Astore) attained a PhD in Contemporary Arts from the

University of Western Sydney Western Sydney University, formerly the University of Western Sydney, is an Australian multi-campus university in the Greater Western region of Sydney, Australia. The university in its current form was founded in 1989 as a federated network ...

(2008). She was Research Affiliate (2009–2013) at Sydney College of the Arts, the Visual Arts Faculty of the

University of Sydney The University of Sydney (USYD), also known as Sydney University, or informally Sydney Uni, is a public research university located in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and is one of the country's ...

and Research Fellow (2011–2012) at the American University of Beirut.

Exhibitions

Mireille Eid (Astore)'s artworks have been exhibited and screened at the 2004

Sydney Film Festival The Sydney Film Festival is an annual competitive film festival held in Sydney, Australia, usually over 12 days in June. A number of awards are given, the top one being the Sydney Film Prize. the festival's director is Nashen Moodley. Histo ...

; at the

Freud Museum The Freud Museum in London is a museum dedicated to Sigmund Freud, located in the house where Freud lived with his family during the last year of his life. In 1938, after escaping Nazi annexation of Austria he came to London via Paris and s ...

– London; at the Millais Gallery – Southampton; at Espace SD – Beirut; the

Tate Modern Tate Modern is an art gallery located in London. It houses the United Kingdom's national collection of international modern and contemporary art, and forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It ...

– London; at the

Centre Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...

; the 8th

Sharjah Biennial The Sharjah Biennial is a large-scale contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in the city of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. The first Sharjah Biennial took place in 1993, and was organized by the Sharjah Department of Cul ...

2008; and the 3rd Guangzhou Triennial. She has exhibited her photomedia artworks at the Conny Dietzschold Multiple Box Gallery – Sydney. In 2003 she won the (Australian) National Photographic Purchase Award. Of Mireille Eid (Astore)'s ''Tampa'' artwork which referenced the MS ''Tampa'' Norwegian ship, it was said:

"Just as Benjamin noted the contextual aesthetic consequences of the circulation of photographic images through newspapers and magazines, Astore’s combination of photography with sculpture and performance, circulated via her website, rewrites both photography and the spatial and interpretive dynamics of this installation work.”

A short film directed by Eid that was based on the ''Tampa'' work, ''Tampa: a Walk on the Beach'', was screened in Sydney and London.

Short films

After ''Tampa: a Walk on the Beach'', Eid's short film, ''Not From Here'' "questions the legitimacy of the original photograph". It has been shown in galleries and film festivals in over 20 countries. Some international screenings include the ''né à Beyrouth'' Film Festival in Beirut, the ''Toronto Arab'' Film Festival and the ''CinemaEast'' Film Festival in New York and the ''Konstföreningen Aura'' Gallery in Sweden. Another short film, ''3494 Houses + 1 Fence'', which juxtaposed images of houses in Australia with scenes from a war damaged fence in Lebanon "create a striking picture of her awareness of the contrasts between her memories and her current life". It was selected to feature in the ''Women's Cinema from Tangiers to Tehran Film Festival'' and was included on the third volume of the "Resistance(s)" DVD series.

Performances

Mireille Eid (Astore) give
lecture performances
''An Ungrateful Death: Al-Karam in the Age of Withdrawal'' took place at the 2008 ''Home Works IV''. She gave the keynote address "Speaking on Behalf of the Other" at the 2005 ''Poetics of Australian Space'' conference – University of Sydney & Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, and "On Autobiography, Economies of Surplus and Surpassing Disasters" as keynote address at the 2010 International Conference on the Arts in Society Conference. 4'33 in 2010 was delivered at the ''Silent Spaces'' Exhibition at the Macquarie University Art Gallery. Her last lecture performance (2011) was “Posthumous Reckonings: A Cosmology of Infinitudes” at the American University of Beirut

Publications

Mireille Eid (Astore)'s artworks, poetry and fictocritical writing are published in: ''New Vision: Arab Contemporary Art in the 21st Century'' (Thames and Hudson);'' Art in the Age of Terrorism'' (Paul Holberton Publishing & University of Washington Press); ''Arab Women’s Lives Retold: Exploring Identity Through Writing'' (Syracuse University Press). In 2008, Mireille Eid (Astore) co-guest edited ''Artlink'' Vol 28 no. 1.

References

External links

Mireille Eid
{{DEFAULTSORT:Eid, Mireille 1961 births Living people Feminist artists Lebanese women artists Lebanese feminists Lebanese women activists Australian photographers Australian women writers Australian writers Australian women photographers Lebanese emigrants to Australia Western Sydney University alumni Australian feminists