Shireen Taweel

Website: www.shireentaweel.com

Email: s.taweel@unsw.edu.au

Supervisors: Diana Baker Smith, Fernando do Campo

Shireen Taweel’s practice-led research reflects the diasporic landscape she inhabits as a Lebanese Australian, employing cross-cultural discourse around the construction of cultural heritage, knowledge, identity, and language. Through sensorially immersive installations that draw on architecture, Islamic science and ritual, Taweel brings to light histories and cultural practices that have been buried beneath the weight of social political power structures. Her most recent work rests speculative astral architecture upon a diverse foundation of past celestial technologies.

The development and research for her projects are often site-specific, working in collaboration with local communities, their architecture and their environment with a focus on experimentation in material and sound through site. Through the contemporary use of heritage coppersmith artisan techniques, including engraving and hand-piercing, Taweel’s works create a space for shared histories and fluid community identities.

Shireen Taweel graduated from a bachelor of Fine Arts in 2015 at the School For Creative Arts Hobart, and completed a Graduate Diploma of Fine Arts in Sculpture in 2016 at The National Art School, Sydney. She is a current resident at the Carriageworks’ Clothing Store Artist Studios, Sydney. Recently Taweel was the recipient of The 68th Blake Art Prize (2024), an award that engages with ideas of spirituality and religion.