Tracing the contours of the cosmos, celestial and cultural, proposing a series of architectural and navigational affirmations for imaginings of future migration and pilgrimage in space, Penrith Regional Gallery presents Shireen Taweel’s solo exhibition Edge of the C from 2 August – 26 October 2025.
Taweel’s site-specific installation takes over the rooms in Lewers House Gallery, former home of artists Margo and Gerald Lewers, featuring two newly commissioned sculptures constructed over the course of six months and a selection of previous works.
Driven by a desire for a more culturally diverse future, and drawing on her own background, Taweel investigates and references the histories of Arabic Science’s celestial navigation and astronomical instruments to fuel inquiries and possibilities for community gathering, ritual and ceremony off-Earth.
For millennia, celestial navigation has allowed humans to move across land and sea through the power of observation – but as the prospect of space migration draws nearer, the question of who is in space, and who participates culturally in this migration, is becoming increasingly narrow.
Taweel adopts ancient making techniques of piercing and engraving copper, as a means of returning the artisan, ancestral connection and spiritual to contemporary discourses on astronomy and space travel.
Through copper sculptures, engraved copper-plate prints and drawing, Edge of the C conceptually references the sextant, quadrant, and astrolabe – instruments used to measure the distance between two objects – to reflect on the consequences of the relationship between science and spirituality.
Hidden scientific, spiritual and cultural Arab histories that have long been misrepresented, undervalued and clouded by colonial voices re-emerge in Taweel’s work, adding to contemporary cultural, political and spiritual considerations and conversations about future migrations into space.
“At a critical time when colonial histories seem at risk of repeating, Edge of the C returns cultural and spiritual inclusivity to imaginings of space migration,” said Penrith Regional Gallery curator, Tia Madden.
“Taweel’s exhibition arrives in Western Sydney as both an offering and an affirmation – reframing the night sky as a space where our local audiences can see their own identities and cultural beliefs reflected among the stars.”
A Sydney-based multidisciplinary artist working on Gadigal Land at Clothing Store Studios at Sydney’s Carriageworks, Shireen Taweel ’s practice rests within a diasporic landscape she inhabits as a Lebanese Australian.
Through 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 – namely the contributions of Arabic Science’s astronomical and celestial navigation instruments to the past and future of migration and pilgrimage.
Taweel’s projects are often site-specific, collaborating with local communities, architecture and environment. Through a contemporary and conceptual application of heritage coppersmith artisan techniques – including engraving and hand-piercing – Taweel imagines futures off-Earth that are built on shared histories and fluid community identities.
Taweel’s installation Pilgrimage of a Hajjanaut is showing at the TarraWarra Biennial 2025: We Are Eagles in Victoria until 20 July 2025. She is a finalist in the Art Gallery of South Australia’s 2025 Ramsay Art Prize, showing until August 31, and will show in the Matters of Time: Contemporary Metal Practices exhibition at UNSW Galleries, 29 August – 16 November 2025.
Shireen Taweel: Edge of the C
Penrith Regional Gallery, 86 River Road, Emu Plains
Exhibition: 2 August – 26 October 2025
For more information, visit: www.penrithregionalgallery.com.au for details.
Images: Shireen Taweel, Devices for Seeing, 2022, engraved and pierced copper, silver, patina treatment, 28 x 10 x 13cm each – photo by Shan Turner-Carroll. Image courtesy the artist and STATION Gallery | Shireen Taweel, Astro architecture I,II,III, 2022, copper engraved unique prints – photo by Document Photography. Image courtesy the artist and STATION gallery