Ahlam Ahmadi named Winner at our latest exhibition with Art Movement

We're delighted to announce Ahlam Ahmadi, a graduate of Goldsmiths, University of London, as the winner of our latest exhibition in partnership with Art Movement gallery.

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Ahmadi's winning work, What Remains (2025), is a large-scale drawing on paper (101.6 x 157 cm) rendered in soft pastel, oil pastel, and graphite. The piece explores the contemporary S.W.A.N.A. (Southwest Asia and North Africa) experience through the figure of a young man, centering the experience of diasporic male youth at the threshold between adolescence and early adulthood.

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Working at scale, Ahmadi uses the physicality of the medium — layered, bodily, gestural mark-making — to resist a fixed sense of place, positioning her figure within a non-specific space. Dense passages of pastel sit alongside sparse, exposed areas of paper, while repeated erasure lets traces of earlier marks remain visible. The result is a drawing that holds presence, erasure, and emergence all at once — considering how identity is shaped through memory and inherited histories.

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From the artist:

"What Remains explores the contemporary S.W.A.N.A. experience through the figure of a young man, focusing on diasporic male youth at the threshold between adolescence and early adulthood... These gestures emphasise the physicality of drawing and create a play between presence, erasure, and what is yet to emerge."

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Ahmadi's work was selected from an exceptional pool of graduate submissions by our panel of curators, gallerists, and industry judges, and now enters the collections and conversations that follow from an exhibition with Art Movement.

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Submissions for The Graduate Art Show 2026 are open now, free to enter, and close September 3rd. Apply here.