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Nahem Shoa's painting
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Nahem Shoa, a contemporary artist and painter was born in 1968 in London, Notting Hill, the city where he stills lives and works. Nahem Shoa's childhood was bohemian as both his parents were artists who had just completed an MA Fine Art, at the Royal College of Art, London.
At the age of four he decided to become an artist, inspired by two vivid childhood experiences, eating jelly off the bodies of two naked people in a hip 1972 London Art Happening and watching his father perched on scaffolding being painted, as a spinning fool, onto a three thousand square foot mural by artist Robert Lenkiewicz. A period as a graffiti artist culminated in 1985 in a big hip hop festival in the Riverside Studio's, where he showed his work alongside legendary American Bronx Graffiti artist Lee 163. Nahem Shoa went on to do a B.A degree in Fine Art in Manchester College of Art and a Postgraduate at The Royal Drawing School. Around this time he began to be trained in the classical tradition by the infamous British painter Robert Lenkiewicz. |
Nahem Shoa: Face of Britain Southampton City Art Gallery 26 September 2020- 20 September 2021
Face of Britain poster
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Nahem Shoa in 2019, September 21st to November 23rd is exhibiting a selection of his striking Black British portraits called Black Presence at The Atkinson, Southport. Alongside his work will be loans from The Tate, The Laing, Southampton Art Gallery, Millennium Galleries, Sheffield, The Herbert, Coventry and RAMM, Exeter, Christ Church Art Gallery, Hartlepool.
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Image: Nahem Shoa. Head of Desmond Haughton
1997. Oil on canvas, 48.2 x 55.8 cms, acquired by Southampton City Art Gallery 
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‘The portrait has always been political, I want my portraits to be great works of art but also to work for positive change’. Nahem Shoa
Artist Nahem Shoa has curated a selection of his striking portrait paintings alongside key historic and contemporary paintings of black portrait sitters. Nahem is especially keen to increase the number of positive images of black people in British art collections and has donated many of his own works to public collections. The exhibition includes work by Joshua Reynolds and Sonia Boyce, as well as Allan Ramsay’s outstanding ‘Portrait of an African (probably Ignatius Sancho.
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DESIREE IN HER OWN WORDS
Desiree Sanderson speaks about the process of sitting for artist Nahem Shoa's painting "Desiree on the Bed". She talks about friendship, racism, learning to love herself and how powerful she felt sitting for Nahem Shoa over many years. |
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Nahem Shoa painted from life Giant Heads of people from Black and Ethnic backgrounds until 2007. He then turned to other subjects that drew on 'unreal' sources, photograph, TV and film as well as memory. He created hugely multi-layered paintings bursting with incident, including floods and nuclear explosions which continued with the theme of death. Most recently Shoa made another dramatic move – from a tangible kind of reality to something quite intangible – where, contrary to all previous methods of working, accident was allowed to prompt imagination.
In 2004 Shoa had his two large-scale, solo museum and art gallery painting exhibitions, Youth Culture, in Plymouth City Art Gallery and Museum and Giant Heads Multi-Culture, at the Hartlepool City Art Gallery. In 2005 he had another one-man exhibition, We Are Here, at The Herbert, Coventry City Art Gallery. In 2006 he exhibited twenty-eight Giant Heads in Bury City Art Gallery In an Exhibition called Facing Yourself.
In 2004 Shoa had his two large-scale, solo museum and art gallery painting exhibitions, Youth Culture, in Plymouth City Art Gallery and Museum and Giant Heads Multi-Culture, at the Hartlepool City Art Gallery. In 2005 he had another one-man exhibition, We Are Here, at The Herbert, Coventry City Art Gallery. In 2006 he exhibited twenty-eight Giant Heads in Bury City Art Gallery In an Exhibition called Facing Yourself.
"My tree drawings and paintings I made last year that culminated in large 3 metre contemporary paintings, that are about nature meeting the city, the urban jungle and climate change," Nahem Shoa
Nahem Shoa's paintings are in international, public and private collections. see ACQUISITIONS
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BACK IMAGINATIVE PAINTINGS
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