17 Facts About Nahem Shoa

Nahem Shoa is a contemporary London painter best known for his series of portraits, collectively called Giant Heads, which were painted at up to 15 times life size.

Nahem Shoa is notable for having increased the number of portraits of Black and mixed-race British people on display in British museums.

Nahem Shoa's work has been exhibited in London's National Portrait Gallery and the Royal Academy as well as at galleries and museums in other parts of the UK.

Nahem Shoa was born to Jewish parents in England in 1968.

Nahem Shoa continued studying under Lenkiewicz at intervals for eight years.

Nahem Shoa went on to complete a BA in Fine Art at Manchester School of Art in 1991 and a Postgraduate at Royal Drawing School in 2004.

Nahem Shoa had noted that Black people were portrayed there almost exclusively in the historical context of slavery or servitude, and complained that, "in Tate Modern there isn't a single [B]lack image and the same can be said of many major collections".

Portraits of [B]lack subjects are rare in galleries even today and Nahem Shoa's picture makes a strong point by its very existence here.

In 2006, Nahem Shoa's work was included in an exhibition he curated at Hartlepool Art Gallery, alongside paintings by Frank Auerbach, Lucian Freud and Robert Lenkiewicz.

Also in 2006, Nahem Shoa had a solo exhibition titled Facing Yourself at Bury Art Gallery.

Nahem Shoa was listed in both 2002's Who's Who in Art, by Bernard Dolman, and 2007's Artists in Britain Since 1945, by David Buckman.

In 1994, some of Nahem Shoa's work was published as part of Drawing Figures, an art-instruction text published in association with the Royal Academy of Arts.

Nahem Shoa has given several lectures about his mentor Robert Lenkiewicz, including 2007's "Close reading with Nahem Shoa", at the Novas Gallery, and 2014's "Sound Bites: Robert Lenkiewicz", in conjunction with the Seale-Hayne exhibition, Family Matters, of Lenkiewicz's work.

In 2012, The Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Art Gallery invited Nahem Shoa to be a member of their Contemporary Arts Panel, serving as a consultant to RAMM for the promotion of contemporary art exhibitions.

In 2014, Nahem Shoa gave his lecture "Paradise Found" at Exeter's Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Art Gallery as part of the exhibition Detached and Timeless, which included paintings by David Bomberg, Prunella Clough, Patrick Heron, Peter Lanyon, and Clare Woods.

Nahem Shoa's lecture explored the various approaches used by these painters to depict the landscape of Britain's southwest.

Also in 2014, Lenkiewicz Reconsidered: Perspectives in Conflict, to which Nahem Shoa contributed, was published by Halsgrove Publishing's Halstar imprint.