Shireen Taweel

B. 1990, Lebanon

Shireen Taweel is an installation and multimedia artist based between Beirut and Sydney. Taweel's work explores the experience of being a Lebanese-Australian, living between two cultures. She explores themes related to socially, politically, and religiously constructed public spaces and chooses copper as the core element in her artwork.

The social conditions of transnational individuals are central to Taweel's artistic practice. Her inquiry into sacred spaces within her community reflects the complex cultural landscape undergoing transformation. Through the progressive application of artisanal techniques she has learned, Taweel manipulates traditional methods of forming, mark-making, and piercing copper. This engagement in a cross-cultural discourse, infused with a sense of the arcane and shifting structures, opens dialogues between shared histories and communities with fluid identities. Taweel's work occupies a space between sculpture, architecture, and fully immersive installations. Her techniques transform traditional copper-smithing artistry, recontextualizing ideas of tradition into a contemporary framework.

About her Work

Beneath Routes explores the emotions and weightiness experienced during transitions, particularly at the intersections where the merging of two cultural bodies inevitably occurs. It is a turbulent meeting place, seeking a definitive hammer strike to imprint the present with a lasting mark and eventual history. Through a temporal softening of technique and a symbiotic touch with the material, the allure of certainty is shaken. Indented motives form processions of subtle change, existing in the transient space, eventually fading from the form beneath the routes taken, between two points.

Organized ambient moments evoke a sense of stability within environments constructed with archival memories and a cultural inventory, encouraging emotional and psychological investment. The ambient sound beneath the routes represents the ephemeral nature of the technological space—fluid and borderless. It serves as a platform for infinite connections and performances that ultimately manifest as truth. The "in between" flows with currents of cultural knowledge, and the communities and identities existing here are built in a realm that is not physical; the physical space represents the past.

Shireen Taweel

Beneath Routes, 2019

Copper sheets & sound installation

MACAM collection, donation from the artist