About
Born to Lebanese and Egyptian parents, Jeanette Bayoumi began creating art as a child and continued to nourish her creativity while simultaneously pursuing a traditional academic path that led her to pursue a legal career. As a lawyer, Jeanette spent years navigating the complexities of the U.S. legal system and advocating for her clients’ rights. These pursuits, along with her diverse upbringing as a first-generation American, fueled her curiosity in the quest for identity and how we, as humans, strive for connection, belonging, and community.
As an Arab American woman, Jeanette’s art serves as an exploration of identity, femininity, cultural intersections, and the nuances of lived experience. Using her own experiences, her work challenges dominant modes of portraying Arab lives, pushing back against stereotypes and misrepresentations that often saturate the narrative. Her work strives to capture the tension between tradition and modernity, the duality of belonging and alienation, and the myriad of emotions that arise from navigating multiple identities. Her paintings serve as a form of self-documentation and advocacy for those with similar experiences, celebrating self-exploration, acceptance, and resilience. Using her image as a mirror, her paintings reflect the stories of those who share similar journeys and invite viewers to connect, empathize, and reflect on their own identities.
Jeanette’s work incorporates themes of feminine strength, ancestry, and justice. Utilizing a vibrant and rich palette echoing her rich experiences and culture, she creates paintings that have both a realistic and digital quality to them. Using size as a feature, Jeanette often opts for large-scale paintings to create the much-needed space for voices like hers to be seen, heard, and understood.