Abdalrahman Mohammed Wins the Akimbo “Let’s Talk About Me for a Minute!” Award

Abdi Mohammed, in-progress drawing, charcoal and Conté on Mylar, 2025. Courtesy of Sheridan College and the University of Toronto Mississauga. Photo: John Armstrong

This year’s winner of the Akimbo “Let’s Talk About Me for a Minute!” Award is Abdalrahman (Abdi) Mohammed.

The annual Akimbo “Let’s Talk About Me for a Minute!” Award recognizes excellence in Studio Art for an artist graduating from the Art and Art History program at Sheridan and the University of Toronto Mississauga. Since 2005, Akimbo has presented the award to support emerging artists as they transition from their studies into professional practice.

Abdi Mohammed is a visual artist currently enrolled in the joint Sheridan and University of Toronto Mississauga Art and Art History Program. Through his ongoing engagement with drawing and sculpture, he explores both mediums as complementary modes of thinking and making, often working across them in a multidisciplinary approach to form.

Abdi’s work explores the interplay of light and shadow—its spatiality, movement, shape, and behaviour—while engaging with imaginative space-making as a means of reinterpreting memory, self, and community, and examining how spatial experiences can shape thought and perception.

Abdi Mohammed, in-progress drawing, charcoal and Conté on Mylar, 2025. Courtesy of Sheridan College and the University of Toronto Mississauga. Photo: John Armstrong

The University of Toronto Mississauga and Sheridan joint Art & Art History Program is the longest standing partnership of its type in Canada. It combines the study of studio art practices at Sheridan and art history at UTM. The program offers six core studios that students complete in their initial two years of study: drawing, painting, sculpture/installation, print media, design and photography. In these studios, students are introduced to contemporary art practices through problem-based learning, which encourages a range of personal approaches and solutions to visual expression. In the upper-level studios, students go on to further expertise in two of the core-studio streams, developing a body of self-directed artwork in a class environment of discussion and exchange. At UTM, students in the joint program enroll in Art History courses in the Department of Visual Studies. These courses provide students with the opportunity to engage in the academic study of art and architecture. Students will learn to analyze visual objects, considering their form, materials and techniques, meaning and historical and political contexts. Courses span the history of art from the ancient to the contemporary world, across Europe, North America and Asia.