Future Australian Muslim Artists 2025
The FAMA 2025 finalists present a compelling body of work that reflects the diversity and complexity of contemporary Australian Muslim experiences. Through painting, digital art, sculpture, glass, printmaking and mixed media, these young artists explore themes of identity, belonging, cultural memory, spirituality and social consciousness. Their works invite audiences to consider how young artists interpret the world around them and how personal narratives intersect with broader cultural and historical contexts.
This year’s exhibition highlights an increasing sophistication in material experimentation and conceptual depth. Many of the artists engage with pressing global issues, articulate the nuances of faith and heritage, or examine inner emotional landscapes with remarkable sensitivity.
FAMA 2025 Art Prize - Maya Dhahir, We Never Really Die
Warmest congratulations to Year 12 student, Maya Dhahir, recipient of the Future Australian Muslim Artists (FAMA) Art Prize 2025 for her work, We Never Really Die. Her body of work explores the idea that consciousness can transcend the limits of the physical body, that identity and thought may persist beyond flesh. Inspired by Lucy (2014) and Carl Jung’s theories of the unconscious, the work investigates what happens when the mind detaches and becomes something vast, intangible, and eternal.
The sculpture - a piece of draped cloth painstakingly welded from bolts - is a deliberate contradiction between material and illusion reflecting the complex relationship between body and mind. The cloth, a traditionally soft and transient object, becomes solid and immovable. In art history, drapery has long symbolised timelessness, transformation and divinity. Here, it represents the eternal and fluid nature of the brain, something shapeless yet powerful, constantly shifting, yet never dying. It captures the idea that even as the body collapses, the mind will continue to ripple outward.
Congratulations to Maya and all finalists in FAMA 2025.