BBC News: Nahem Shoa overcomes racism
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Into the Light: An Intervention by Nahem Shoa
6 Oct 2023--31 Mar 2024 Into the Light will see six of Nahem Shoa’s paintings displayed beside famous artworks from the Walker’s permanent collections – including artists such as Joseph Wright of Derby, David Hockney, Lucien Freud and James Tissot. Asking uncomfortable questions related to Transatlantic slavery, Liverpool’s cotton industry and the objectification of women in art, Into the Light will see six of Nahem Shoa’s paintings displayed beside famous artworks from the Walker’s permanent collections – including artists such as Joseph Wright of Derby, David Hockney, Lucien Freud and James Tissot. Shoa’s intervention also celebrates the Walker Art Gallery’s newest acquisition by the artist, The back of Gbenga Ilumoka’s Head. This ground-breaking and provocative painting is part of Shoa’s pioneering body of work around themes of race, identity, diversity - and the importance of celebrating British multiculturalism. |
Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield, Portraiture of the Human Figure - 2023 - 2025
Face of Britain
Face of Britain poster
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Face of Britain, curated by Nahem Shoa, is an exhibition of portraits by outstanding artists who have painted British individuals from the 17th century to the present day. Amongst highlights from the Southampton City Art Gallery collection is a selection of Shoa’s own striking oil paintings of black and mixed race sitters. Face of Britain asks a question which is especially pertinent now as world events force the widespread reassessment of our history and institutions: What does it mean to be British in 2020? At a time when many of the paintings in our national museums do not represent a non-white presence in Britain, which evidence suggests stretches back to Roman times, this is a portrait of our country inviting us to consider our diversity.
Shoa has chosen work by contemporary black artists like Desmond Haughton, Sonia Boyce and Chris Ofili to be displayed alongside historic portraits by Anthony Van Dyck and John Singer Sargeant and paintings by seminal Modernist figures such as Gwen John, Walter Sickert and Frank Auerbach. Through his work and his longstanding engagement with the history of portraiture, Shoa explores the possibilities for a traditional genre largely devoted to the commemoration of society’s most powerful. |
FACE OF BRITAIN: September 26 2020 - September 20 2021
The Unselfish Selfie
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Artists for over three thousand years did not make self-portraits and they only really began to do so in the 14th century. This was when the great artists stopped being anonymous craftspeople and became art superstars. That is why we all know what Frida Kahlo , Van Gogh, Picasso and Tracy Emin look like.
Through their Self Portraits, they have all become icons. Celebrity culture is a modern offshoot of this kind of immortality and intern has triggered our love of taking selfies. How we look to others has become more important than how we think and believe of ourselves. This talk explores the meanings behind some of the greatest Self Portraits from the 14th century to the present day and why they remain fresh and relevant, even now in the 21st century. The best self-portraits are some of the greatest art ever made because they are about the human condition and reveal profound inner truths about the artist, but also speak to our own unique humanity. |
Manchester City Art Gallery
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New acquisition: Nahem Shoa
Manchester Art Gallery is delighted to announce that a painting by Nahem Shoa has been gifted by the artist to the collection. Now based in London, Shoa studied in Manchester and this portrait was painted in his final year at Manchester School of Art and was exhibited in his degree show. The painting depicts Shoa’s childhood friend, the artist Desmond Haughton. Shoa painted the portrait from life at night after the college day ended. It took 2 months between the winter and spring of 1991 in Haughton’s studio in Hulme, Manchester and involved around 12 two-hour sittings. After finishing college, Shoa returned to London where he did one final sitting with Haughton to bring out more subtlety and presence from the portrait. Shoa has a long term commitment to representing people of colour. He strives to capture the unique skin colour that is individual to the sitter and not a racial stereotype. Shoa’s goal is to paint black skin as intensely as Lucien Freud painted white skin. This painting joins another smaller work by Shoa in the collection titled View from Hulme Flat c.1990. This was the view from Desmond Haughton’s flat, the location where the portrait sittings occurred. It shows the Crescents in Hulme shortly before they were demolished in 1993, a place where many of the city’s artists and creatives lived. |
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Now based in London, he studied in Manchester. Shoa has a long term commitment to representing people of colour.He strives to capture the unique skin colour that is individual to the sitter and not a racial stereotype. Shoa’s goal is to paint black skin as intensely as Lucien Freud painted white
in October 2021 there was an article in The Plymouth Herald about Nahem Shoa's portrait of Gbenga in the collection of The Box, Plymouth.
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New Exhibition: Black Presence: Nahem ShoaSaturday 21 September 2019 – Saturday 23 November
The Atkinson’s new exhibition takes place during Black History Month. Most British museums and art galleries have very few paintings of black people and even fewer by black artists even though there has been a black presence here since Roman times. This exhibition addresses this imbalance by showing portraits of black British individuals from the 18th century to the present day, who were known for their talent and achievements. It counteracts negative stereotypes inevitably portrayed in so many historical paintings and even in today’s media. Some of the paintings in the exhibition are from The Atkinson’ collection and the contrast with Nahem’s work is immediately obvious. Historic images including those from The Atkinson’s collection tend to be negative and based on a limited number of stereotypes – Stephen Whittle, Principal Manager, The Atkinson It may surprise people that when Shoa painted his black portraits he never used black, umber and brown oil paint in his palette, in fact he has always used the same colours to paint both white and black people. Using oils, as realistically as possible, he was exploring the nuances of colour in different types of black skin, a study not dissimilar to the way Lucian Freud or Euan Uglow explored white skin.
Nahem Shoa was born in London in 1968. His parents are from Jewish, Scottish, Yemeni, Eritrean, and Russian backgrounds and he grew up in Notting Hill, London one of Britain’s most culturally diverse neighborhoods. In his teens he worked as a graffiti artist before studying at Manchester Collage of Art, the Princes Drawing School and with Robert Lenkiewicz |
Artists & Illustrators Magazine September 2019
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Into The Wild Abyss - 2017
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June- September 2017 at RAMM
The Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Art Gallery, Exeter. Nahem Shoa with artists Gordon Cheung and Rui Matsunaga exhibit their paintings inspired by John Milton's epic poem, Paradise Lost. 
Into The Wild Abyss
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Teenage Grotto
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For the second instalment of Traction Magazine’s three-part interview series, Nahem Shoa shares the stylistic and conceptual influences behind his body of work in ‘Hard-Boiled Wonderland’ at Jessica Carlisle, London.
"There is something very timeless about your paintings, but titles such as ‘Coke Head’ and ‘Drug Dealers’ root them firmly within the grittier reality of contemporary society. Is there a politic agenda in bringing characters such as these - mostly ignored by art history - into the forefront of your paintings?"
I love the paintings of Giorgione and Titian that are set in early twilight, where shepherds and lovers sit in a still and timeless landscape. We have all felt this mood when in these kind of places and our souls yearn to be there. The real world is darker and more scary. Pretty nine year old children sell drugs for the Mafia in Sicily and across the word. My paintings try to convey both gritty reality and timelessness because that is how I see the world. I always steered towards subject matter that art history ignores and I feel deserves to be seen.
Susie Pentelow | Editor
I love the paintings of Giorgione and Titian that are set in early twilight, where shepherds and lovers sit in a still and timeless landscape. We have all felt this mood when in these kind of places and our souls yearn to be there. The real world is darker and more scary. Pretty nine year old children sell drugs for the Mafia in Sicily and across the word. My paintings try to convey both gritty reality and timelessness because that is how I see the world. I always steered towards subject matter that art history ignores and I feel deserves to be seen.
Susie Pentelow | Editor
Portrait of Nahem Shoa by Photographer Axel Bernstorff