I acknowledge the Gadigal and Guringai people as the traditional custodians of the land on which I live and work, and I pay respect to their Elders past and present. This is, was, and always will be Aboriginal land.
Safdar Ahmed is a multi-award winning artist, writer, musician, cultural worker and creative producer based in Hornsby, Sydney. His work spans across a range of fields including academic writing, human rights advocacy, community art, cartooning and graphic narratives, zine making, short film collaboration, musical performance and installation. Safdar’s practice focusses on issues of representation and belonging, referencing personal history, storytelling, cultural exegesis and Muslim tradition.
In 2025 he published The Nightmare Sequence in collaboration with the poet Omar Sakr, through University of Queensland Press.
From 2024 onwards he has published Space Jihad, a serialised comic in 6 issues through Glom Press.
In June 2022 he contributed to documenta fifteen, which took place in Kassel Germany.
In 2021 he released his award-winning graphic novel Still Alive through Twelve Panels Press and Fantagraphics.
Safdar is a founding member of the Refugee Art Project, for which he conducts art workshops with people of a refugee background in their studio at Thirning Villa, Ashfield. This organisation was founded to facilitate art workshops for people incarcerated in the Villawood detention centre – to amplify their voices through public exhibitions and in self-published zines. The Refugee Art Project aims to deepen public understanding about the asylum seeker issue and the realities of Australia’s detention regime.
Safdar is a member of eleven – a collective of contemporary Muslim Australian artists, curators and writers. The collective aims to establish an independent creative platform from which the alternative narratives and autonomous voice of Muslim artists can be expressed, shared and experienced. As a nationwide collective of creative thinkers and practitioners, eleven uniquely straddles contemporary art, academia and grass roots community engagement with the intent to amplify the intellectual, robust and dynamic conversations about Muslim artists in Australia.
Safdar obtained his PhD with the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Sydney, which was published under the title Reform and Modernity in Islam (IB Tauris, 2013). He has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the National Art School and Certificate IV in Arts Administration.
Safdar plays guitar and growls in the heavy metal band Hazeen alongside his good friend Can Yalcinkaya.
safdar ahmed 