Schirin Shahed

Schirin Shahed is a transdisciplinary artist and educator with a background in geography. As a cultural activist, she has worked with Moviemiento e.V. and other NGOs to activate and transform different spaces into sites for artistic, educational, and public engagement. Across these contexts, she explores and communicates questions around sustainability, from ecology and climate justice to democracy, social movements, and collective forms of action.

Her practice moves, among other things, across nature journaling, comics, and participatory formats. She uses visual storytelling and attentive observation as ways of researching and sharing knowledge, bringing together artistic, scientific, and lived perspectives. Working with pen and paper, she observes and documents plants, landscapes, and everyday encounters, while exploring the ecological and socio-cultural stories embedded within them. Through workshops, collaborative projects, and site-specific interventions, she creates accessible spaces for exchange and reflection.

Food and cooking could often become part of these encounters: sharing meals, exploring fruits and plants, and exchanging recipes offer enjoyable and personal ways of engaging with cultures and people and their stories.

During her residency at 150 m d’altitude, she focuses on the banana as a complex cultural, ecological, and colonial symbol. Starting from this plant and ecology, her research traces the intertwined stories of Caribbean foodways and agricultural cultivation, while engaging with the lasting environmental and social consequences of colonial history.