Sirena Varma
is a multidisciplinary designer and artist who works across the visual arts, graphic design and exhibition design from Beirut, based in Magan-djin (Brisbane). Through processes grounded in collaboration and co-creation, Sirena brings forth evocative engagements on cultural care, collective memory and visual story-telling. Sirena’s design work has been featured in Beirut Design Week, Dutch Design Week, Frame Magazine and the Institute of Modern Art.
As a self-taught graphic designer with a Bachelor in Architecture, and co-founder and creative director of Twig Collaborative, Sirena has spent over a decade refining her creative and collaborative processes. Through Twig Collaborative, Sirena has worked with clients from major global brands and academic institutions such as Uber, Beirut Art Center, Parsons The New School, and University of Chicago. Bringing her array of skills to data visualisation as the lead designer for the United Nations Development Program project on the 2020 Beirut port explosion, this work has since become one of UNDP Lebanon’s most-shared links. Guided by her commitment to cultural care and resistance through art, Sirena co-founded Magan-djin Creatives for Palestine with artist and print-maker, Prita Tina Yeganeh, designing branding and scenography for Magan-djin for Palestine exhibitions and activations.
Sirena’s interdisciplinary praxis is shaped by creative processes that embrace engaging with a range of mediums and collaborators, alongside inspiration drawn from her Lebanese, Palestinian, German and Indian heritage and personal experience with migration. Sirena’s most recent exhibition, Blatt & Matonelli: Mosaic Morphologies, developed with Katherine Palella and presented by Outer Space, reimagines traditional tile-making practices to craft a contemporary visual conversation with the aesthetics of the Levant and Mediterranean and the various waves of migration to Australia since the 1960s.
Photograph by Thomas Oliver www.thomasoliver.photo
Writing by Lamisse Hamouda
CV
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2015 - Present
Lead Designer & Co-founder, Twig Collaborative2021 - 2024
Senior Graphic Designer, Performance Frontiers. Brisbane, QLD2020 - Present
Guest Lecturer, Parsons School of Design.2014 - 2015
Architect, Khatib & Alami. Beirut, Lebanon2013
Junior Architect, Polypod. Beirut, Lebanon -
2009 - 2014
Bachelor of Architecture, American University of Beirut -
2025
Blatt & Matonelli: Public Art Installation, Fish Lane Town Square Vitrines. Brisbane, QLD2025
Blatt & Matonelli: Mosaic Morphologies, Judith Wright Arts Centre, Outer Space 2025 Façade Exhibition Program. Brisbane, QLD2024
Magan-djin Creatives for Palestine: 12 Months of Solidarity, Kepk. Brisbane, QLD2024
Magan-djin Creatives for Palestine: The First Gathering, Vacant Assembly. Brisbane, QLD2022
Beirut Octet, Saleh Barakat Gallery. Beirut, Lebanon2020
Art in Isolation: Creativity in the time of COVID19, Middle East Institute’s Arts & Culture Center. Washington D.C., USA2019
Return Journeys Retrospective, Saleh Barakat Gallery. Beirut, Lebanon2018
50th Architecture Anniversary, American University of Beirut. Beirut, Lebanon2017
Shifting Lights Exhibition, Beit Beirut. Beirut, Lebanon -
2022
Beirut Octet, A Generation’s Journey of Resilience & Faith by Afaf Zurayk2021
The View From Within by Afaf Zurayk2020
Beyond Art by Afaf Zurayk2019
Return Journeys Monograph by Afaf Zurayk2019
Drawn By Light by Afaf Zurayk2017
Shifting Lights Monograph by Afaf Zurayk, Noel Nasr, and Twig Collaborative -
2024
Wearable Objects, Institute of Modern Art Gallery Shop, Open House. Brisbane, QLD2022
Twig Kit, Dutch Design Week 2022.2017 - 2022
Modular Thing, Dutch Design Week 2022, Beirut Design Week 20172020
Permutable Kit, Beirut Art Center. Beirut, Lebanon