Student Spotlight: Tara Marshi '21

Tara Marshi ’21 is a double concentrator in Middle East Studies and Visual Art from New York, NY. Tara is originally of Lebanese descent, and her broader academic interests include using art—namely photography, collage, and drawing—as a tool to embody the coexisting layers of her identity in regards to the subject of modernity and the Middle East. This past summer, Tara was in her family home in Ashrafieh in Beirut when the Beirut explosion took place on August 4, 2020. After seeing her country in ruins and having the sound of the explosion still ringing in her ears, Tara volunteered with Beit El Baraka, a nonprofit NGO, to help clean the streets and homes of Beirut directly affected by the explosion. Recently, Tara has created a photography project and a collage piece illustrating her reactions to the explosion, and she hopes to continue raising awareness of the psychological and physical pain inflicted by the explosion through her art.