Diversity Week
Mireille Astore
Mireille Astore
Mireille Astore (Beirut, 1961) is an artist and writer. Her videos have been exhibited and screened widely such as at: the 2004 Sydney Film Festival, 2005 CinemaEast – New York, 2006 Copenhagen Contemporary Art Centre; Freud Museum - London; Leeds City Art Gallery; Millais Gallery – Southampton, Casoria Contemporary Art Museum - Naples; Sakakini Cultural Centre - Ramallah; Espace SD – Beirut, 2007 Adelaide Film Festival, Tate Modern – London; 8th Sharjah Biennial, 2008 Home Works IV – Beirut; 3rd Guangzhou Triennial, Women's Cinema from Tangiers to Tehran Film Festival – London & Berkeley.
She has had numerous solo exhibitions at the Conny Dietzschold Multiple Box Gallery - Sydney and in 2003 she won the (Australian) National Photographic Purchase Award. In 2007, she was curator of the Pressure Points: Arabic Perspectives on Tradition and the City Sydneyevents.
She has been a guest speaker at numerous conferences such as the keynote address at the Poetics of Australian Space conference - University of Sydney & Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 9-12 February 2005; invited speaker at the Cultural Dynamics of 'New World' Visions and Representations Conference — Université Stendhal Grenoble, 8, 9 December 2005; Tactics Against Fear seminar — University of Wollongong, 3 September 2007; The Italian Effect Conference –- University of Sydney, 9 -11 September 2004; and Australian and International Feminisms Conference – Boston University Sydney program– University of Sydney, 12 -14 December 2004.
Her poetry and fictocritical writing are published in books and refereed journals such as Arab Women's Lives Retold: Exploring Identity Through Writing, Imagined Australia, Hecate Journal and the Law, Text, Culture Journal.
Of Mireille Astore's Tampa artwork, 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." Peter Hutchings, Eyeline issue 54, Winter 2004.
Of Mireille Astore's writing in Arab Women's Lives Retold: Exploring Identity Through Writing (Nawar Al-Hassan Golley (Ed.) New York: Syracuse University Press, 2007), it was said: "In two of the most compelling chapters, Mireille Astore explains the sources for her intensely physical photography" Nedra Crowe-Evers - Library Journal, issue 10 January 2007.
Mireille Astore was born in Beirut and fled Lebanon during the civil war to Australia where she now lives with her husband and two children. She has a PhD (Contemporary Arts).