Nahem Shoa was born in 1968 in London, the city where he stills lives and works. His childhood was rather bohemian as both of his parents were artists who had just come out of the Royal College of Art. Already at the age of four he had decided to become an artist, due in part to 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.

After a brief period as a graffiti artist which 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. He went on to do a B.A degree in Fine Art in Manchester College of Art. It was around this time that he began to be trained in the classical tradition by the infamous British painter Robert Lenkiewicz.

In 2004 in had his two large-scale museum 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 2007 he was in a group exhibition, 'True To Life' at the Herbert, Coventry, where he exhibited his work alongside, Freud, Auerbach, Bomberg and Lenkiewicz.  Since then he has been developing new work.