Winners of new prize for women artists announced
Three new works acquired for Women's Art Collection thanks to philanthropic partnership
Three female artists exploring themes ranging from the mythology of South Sudan and the politics of clothing in India to impermanence and the consciousness of living are the winners of a prestigious new prize that will see their work enter The Women’s Art Collection here at ºÚÁÏÍø±¬³Ô¹Ï.
Atong Atem (), Moumita Basak () and IyunOla Sanyaolu () were announced as the winners of the WAC x FAMM Prize at , the global art fair.
The award is the result of a pioneering partnership between the Collection, the largest publicly accessible collection in Europe of art by women, and in Provence, France, founded in 2024 by art collector and philanthropist Christian Levett.
Bringing together two leading collections dedicated to championing women artists, the new fund was established to acquire a work by a female artist whose work had not yet entered a UK public collection. The initiative aims to support an artist at a critical moment in their career, increasing visibility while ensuring their work can be seen, studied and preserved for future generations.
WAC Director Harriet Loffler said: ‘We were thrilled to be able to acquire works by three extraordinarily talented female artists. Bringing these important practices into the Collection reflects our commitment to expanding and enriching the stories represented in public collections, and we are honoured to support their work at this stage in their careers.’
Acting College President Dr Rachel Polonsky congratulated the winning artists. She said: ‘The WAC x FAMM Prize demonstrates the wonderful possibilities enabled by thoughtful philanthropic partnerships. We are deeply grateful to FAMM and Christian Levett for their generosity in enabling the Collection to acquire these three works.
‘Each of the three artworks has its own individual power and beauty, yet all feel entirely right for the Collection, and will take their place in its constellation. We look forward to our College community and the many visitors to the Collection being able to admire these new additions.’
Below we share more information about the work of the prize-winning artists
IyunOla Sanyaolu (b. 1998, Nigeria)
Acquired work: Labalábá (2026)
Sanyaolu uses oil paint, oil sticks and charcoal to build texture, depth and gestural mark-making. Using a layered build-up of form through the impasto technique, scraping, covering and reworking her surfaces in a process she describes as ‘sculpting with paint’, she presents picturesque domestic scenes drawn from everyday existence.
Her work returns continually to themes of life, death, impermanence and the consciousness of living. Her paintings blend abstract and figurative elements, holding the two in tension: figuration offers something familiar to grasp, while abstraction pulls it toward the spiritual, the unclear and the elusive. The result sits in the space between what can be seen plainly and what can only be sensed.
Atong Atem (b.1991, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia)
Acquired work: Maria of Mars (2022)
Atem is an Ethiopian-born South Sudanese artist and writer living and working in Naarm/Melbourne. Her work explores the history of photography, the shadows of colonialism and the practices, rituals and mythology of the Dinka People of South Sudan.
She works primarily in photography, video, and textiles, exploring the inherent intimacy of portraiture and photography as well as the role photographers take as story tellers, interrogating photography as a framework for looking at the world and positioning people in it. She takes framing into a fantastical direction with small portals over the subjects’ faces, inviting the viewer to look at them through a surreal and constructed lens. Atem references the works of 20th century African studio photographers to create a visual representation of a relationship to culture.
Moumita Basak (b. 1996, Burdwan, India)
Acquired work: Dualities (2023)
Basak comes from a village in India where she recognises that her relationship with her home weighs heavier than with her external environment. It is her entanglement with nature and the acknowledgement of how she strays from it every day that inspires her work. She speaks of womanhood and her experiences of growing up in India as a woman in a patriarchal society.
As an eco-feminist artist, she uses motifs of plant weed, abandoned clothes and tea as colour to explore issues including gender inequality, politics of clothing and the rural-urban divide in India. Her work resonates with themes of experience, memories and familiar surroundings. She speaks of loneliness as a friend that everyone has – the emotions it generates percolating into her practice.