Shireen Taweel is a Sydney based multidisciplinary artist working on Gadigal Land. Taweel’s practice draws on speculative futurisms and alternative histories as a means to decolonise future cultural, political and ethical dimensions of Space migration. Taweel focuses on the construction of future transcendental architecture and movement ecology informed by the Arabic Sciences’ contribution to astronomy and celestial navigation instruments to the past and future of migration and pilgrimage. Taweel’s development and research is often site-specific, working in collaboration with local communities, architecture and environment, experimenting with the materiality of site. Conceptual applications of artisanal techniques and speculative narrative drives cross-cultural discourse, and dialogues of shared histories and fluid community identities.

Taweel’s works have been widely exhibited in notable institutions throughout Australia, Lebanon and Germany. Most recently, she has presented the solo exhibition the trig point at Mosman Art Gallery. The exhibition forms part of an ongoing, iterative project that includes pacing seven circles, showing at Gertrude Contemporary in June 2026, with a subsequent iteration to be presented at Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Aotearoa New Zealand, in 2027. Taweel was also the Dunedin Public Art Gallery’s 2024 International Visiting Artist, resulting in the solo exhibition 5364 nocturne.

Selected recent solo exhibitions include Pacing Seven Circles, Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne (2026), the trig point, Mosman Art Gallery, Sydney (2026) Between Science and the Sublime, Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco, USA (2025); Edge of the C, Penrith Regional Gallery, Sydney (2025); Cosmographic, Artspace, Sydney (2024); Switching Codes, Fairfield City Museum & Galleries, Sydney (2020); Holding Patterns, 4A Centre of Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney (2020); and razing legacy, Haven for Artists, Beirut, Lebanon (2019). Selected recent group shows include TarraWarra Biennale 2025: We Are Eagles, TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healesville (2025); SPACE: internal illuminations, Fotografiska Museum Shanghai, China (2025); And Still I Rise, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2025); In the Inner Bark of Trees, Archive Sites, Savvy Contemporary, Berlin, Germany (2023); this language that is every stone, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane (2022); Making Worlds, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2022).

In addition to winning the 68th Blake Prize in 2024, Taweel was a finalist in the Ramsay Art Prize (2025), the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize (2022), was a highly commended finalist in the David Harold Tribe Sculpture Award (2022), and received the commendation prize for The Churchie Art Prize (2019). Her works are held in the collections of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; and the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. In 2023, Shireen was selected to participate in the artist-in-residence programme at Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris.

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