Marisa McCarthy
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©2025 Marisa McCarthy
About
Marisa McCarthy is a Boston-based multidisciplinary artist. She recently graduated from the combined-degree program at Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts where she received a B.A. in Applied Environmental Studies and a B.F.A. in Studio Art. Marisa recently began her role as Project Assistant at the MIT Office of the Arts, working to plan and execute arts classes, shows, and other programming at MIT. In her art practice, Marisa works primarily in oil paint and jewelry smithing which she uses to explore cultural identity and environmental themes.
Artist Statement
My work is concerned with issues of cultural formation through colonization, immigration, and assimilation pertaining to the mixed-race American experience. Particularly, within this cultural formation, I am interested in examining what aspects of visual culture have changed, persisted, and been erased over time. Through the creation of new multicultural family heirlooms, I replace and reconnect the elements of my cultural inheritance which have been lost and obscured by combining elements of the visual traditions of my mixed heritage. My work focuses on adornment of the body giving emphasis to the historical traditions and symbolism surrounding different forms of adornment. Through this work, I resurrect the visual cultures of my ancestors and grant myself conditional access to my inherited cultures from which my mixed-race Otherizes me. This access is dependent on taking elements of the visual traditions of Spain and India and anchoring them to specific memories from my upbringing outside of these cultures. By wearing these multicultural heirlooms, the mixed body is at once tethered to yet held at a distance from its ancestral cultures.