Shireen Taweel
pacing seven circles

pacing seven circles looks at the mobility of sanctuary, in which relocation, adaptation and repurposing form a process of sacred place making. Existing outside of the representation of past and future, the installation as sacred space sits in a temporal geography of existence and fabulation. pacing seven circles assembly of geometry, is the architectural infrastructure of a future oriented ritual. Draped in a fabric of blazing red pigment, it is unclear and fragile, although resilient in its radiating magnitude. Sculptural forms settle in the circles of fabric. The pierced copper forms are dislocating temporal markers of time, faith and science. Resonating with abstraction and vibration the pulse of the installation is of one who finds sanctuary in the unacquainted landscape.

Shireen Taweel is a resident artist at The Clothing Store Artist Studios at Carriageworks, Sydney. Her 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 science’s contribution of 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 artisan techniques and speculative narrative drives cross-cultural discourse and dialogues of shared histories and fluid community identities.

Selected recent solo exhibitions include Between Science and the Sublime, Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco, USA (2025); Edge of the C, Penrith Regional Gallery (2025); 5364 nocturne, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Aotearoa New Zealand (2024); 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 exhibitions include TarraWarra Biennial 2025: We Are Eagles, TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healesville (2025); SPACE: internal illuminations, Fotografia Museum Shanghai, China (2025); 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, Meanjin Brisbane (2022); Right to Access Universal Data, Biennale of Contemporary Art, MACAM, Alita, Lebanon (2019); Vices and Validation, Institut Français Du Liban, Beirut, Lebanon (2019); and So That You Might Know Each Other, National Museum of Australia, Canberra (2018).

Shireen Taweel is represented by Station, Naarm Melbourne and Sydney.

pacing seven circles is an iterative exhibition presented with the trig point at Mosman Art Gallery, Sydney (2026) and Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Aotearoa New Zealand (2027).