Egyptian artist Adham Faramawy has been named the winner of the CIRCA Prize 2025, announced Monday evening via London’s Piccadilly Lights. The award, given by London-based arts organization Cultural Institute of Radical Contemporary Arts (CIRCA), spotlights emerging artists grappling with urgent environmental or cultural issues. The announcement was made by Venezuelan artist Alvaro Barrington during a 30-minute screen takeover.
Now in its fifth year, the CIRCA Prize will award Faramawy £30,000 ($39,800) to support their practice and to help produce the Piccadilly commission, which will debut in 2027. This year’s competition invited artists to respond to the theme “REFUGIA,” a call to imagine sanctuaries of adaptation amid crisis, where life endures through environmental upheaval.
Faramawy’s video, A Proposal for a Parakeet’s Garden, was selected from more than 1,000 entries across 25 countries. The jury—comprising Björk, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Edward Enninful, Michèle Lamy, Ebony L. Haynes, Alvaro Barrington, Nicoletta Fiorucci, Josef O’Connor, Norman Rosenthal, and Catherine Wood—praised the work’s “poetic clarity” in a statement, emphasizing how the work offers a “tender yet urgent reflection on belonging, migration, and care.” The piece interprets the parakeet as a symbol of survival, reframing the bird’s colonial history as a metaphor for resilience.
A Proposal for a Parakeet’s Garden was first shown at London’s Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art in 2020.
Born in 1981 in Dubai, Faramawy lives and works in London. Their work spans from sculptural installation to moving image, often addressing what it means to be an immigrant. Their performance and film work have been featured at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Tate Modern and Tate Britain in London, and Serpentine Galleries, to name a few. The artist is currently presenting a solo show at Niru Ratnam in London, titled “The Earth Laughs in Flowers.”
Meanwhile, multidisciplinary artist Olukemi Lijadu received the £10,000 ($13,200) Public Vote Prize powered by Piccadilly Lights for Sister, Sister, a moving-image portrait of her aunts (the Nigerian singing duo The Lijadu Sisters). Drawing on Yoruba cosmology and the sisters’ musical legacy, the work layers sound, ritual, and family history to reflect themes of refuge.
Previous prize winners include Joseph Wilson in 2021, Mary Martins in 2022, Cemile Sahin in 2023, and Bernice Mulenga in 2024. Since its inception in 2020, CIRCA has raised more than £1 million ($1.3 million) to support public art and education.
