صنع في أمريكا (Made in USA): Artwork from the Eliot School of Fine & Applied Arts 2023 Artist in Residence Project

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Each year, the Eliot School of Fine & Applied Arts selects an artist to produce a body of work in collaboration with community members and teen artists from its Teen Bridge program.

Feda Eid is a Lebanese American visual artist whose work explores the expression of heritage, tradition, identity, and the often tense but beautiful space between what is said, what is felt, and what is lost in translation. During her residency, Feda worked with five young artists from Teen Bridge: Jacob De Palm, Elian Feliz, Hajar El Ayoubi, Rose Bethanica Gelin, and Marie Liza Manigat.

Feda Eid's صنع في أمريكا (Made in USA) series centers on self-portraits and still lifes that share the interplay of cultural expression and identity. The images are set within the backdrop of her personal experiences growing up as an Arab and Muslim within a melting pot of assimilation, Islamophobia, orientalism, and stereotypes perpetuated by art, politics, and the media.

Through a reimagined red, white, and blue color palette, the photographs explore the uprooting and replanting of her parents from seeds of war and the blooming of self. They are fashioned using second-hand, handmade, and hand-me-down textiles, tools, and objects referencing pop culture elements from SWANA (Southwest Asian and North African), Levantine, and American traditions. The work points to creation as a portal to transformative, sacred, wayfinding, and healing practices of the past, present, and future.

Drawing on themes from her صنع في أمريكا (Made in USA) series, Feda led the young artists in an exploration of self-portraiture and storytelling using costume, props, writing, and photography. They explored questions about what it means to grow up in the USA in the context of legacies of othering and exclusion.

With a team from the Boston Public Library's Community History program, they learned to use oral history backpacks to conduct interviews. They crafted their own self-portraits and portraits of people close to them. Then they curated interview excerpts to accompany the portraits.

This collection contains portraits, self-portraits, artist statements, and oral history interviews created through this project, as well as images from Feda's في أمريكا (Made in USA) series.

About Feda Eid

Feda Eid is a Lebanese American visual artist living on occupied, unceded territory of the Wampanoag, Nipmuc, and Massachusett People (Quincy, MA). Her portrait and self-portrait work explores the expression of heritage, tradition, identity, and the often tense but beautiful space between what is said, what is felt, and what is lost in translation. She captures these emotions through her bold use of color, textiles, adornment, and pop culture linking the past and present. As the daughter of Lebanese immigrants who fled the country's civil war in 1982, Feda is guided by her family's journey and her own childhood growing up as a Muslim in the US. She believes in the telling of personal narratives to broaden our perspectives and to ultimately help us feel the universal emotions that connect us all.

About The Eliot School of Fine & Applied Arts Artist in Residence Program

The Eliot School's mission is to inspire lifelong learning in craft and creativity for all. It offers classes for all ages in its Jamaica Plain classrooms and sends teachers to classrooms in schools and community centers throughout the city, mainly serving Black and brown students enrolled in Boston Public Schools.

To better fulfill its mission, it has set racial equity at the core of its vision. What is now the Eliot School of Fine & Applied Arts began as a grammar school in 1676. It is named after John Eliot, a colonial missionary with a complex legacy, known for establishing Praying Towns where Native communities acculturated to Christianity. Reckoning with Eliot's legacy is part of the School's current work. The school historically occupied traditional lands of the Wampanoag, the Pawtucket, the Ponkapoag, and the people known today as the Massachusett.

The Eliot School's Artist in Residence program engages a Boston-based artist each year to create a public body of art on a theme important to its communities. The program provides an immersive arts experience for Teen Bridge artists. Teen Bridge brings a small group of art-passionate teens from Boston schools to our Jamaica Plain classrooms year-round over multiple years, from 8th grade through high school. The teens participate in a rigorous program that combines skill building, mentorship, employment, and intensive art exposure and enrichment. The opportunity to work closely with Artists in Residence, creating public artwork informed by community process, is an important part of their experience.