Noorain Inam
Noorain Inam (b. 1998, Karachi) lives and works in London. Her painting practice explores the construction of identity and belonging through a layering of cultural references and contexts. Inam creates uncanny, surreal and destabilising spaces by bringing together deeply personal experiences, storytelling and symbolic motifs. Exploring themes of longing and fear, these phantasmagorical worlds are a meeting ground for imagination and lived reality.
In 2023, she was awarded the prestigious Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Residency Award for Emerging Artists which includes a three-month Residency at Porthmeor Studios, St Ives. Inam received an MFA Painting from Slade School of Fine Art, London in 2022 and a BFA from Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, Karachi in 2019. Through these experiences, she melds miniature painting techniques with Western expressive gestural painting styles, to create complex emotional landscapes. Selected exhibitions include Lattice structure of space-time, Indigo+Madder, London, 2024; Go back to sleep, it's just the wind, Indigo+Madder, London, 2024; Prophetic Dreams, Kutlesa Gallery, Switzerland, 2024, A dream that visited every night, Indigo+Madder, London in January 2023; Shining Light and Bloomsbury Festival Prize Winner Presentation, London, 2021.
Studio Visit with Noorain Inam
Interview: Noorain Inam at Porthmeor Studios - September 2023
Selected Press:
A magician with a carton full of empathy, 2024
Acrylic on canvas
220 x 60 cm | 86.6 x 23.6 in
The unbearable lightness of forgetting my name, 2024
Acrylic and oil on canvas
220 x 210 cm | 86.6 x 82.6 in
Twelve short films about a mattress, 2024
Acrylic, oil and ink on canvas
220 x 210 cm | 86.6 x 82.6 in
A moon that surrounded itself with the most interesting stars, 2024
Acrylic on board
30 x 40 cm | 12 x 16 in
A vinyl player, a poet and a con artist, 2023
Acrylic and oil on canvas
150 x 170 cm | 59 x 70 in
A house on a hill, a car in the middle of the sea, 2023
Acrylic, oil and ink on linen
160 x 195 cm | 63 x 76.7 in
It’s all in your mind I, 2024
Acrylic and oil on canvas
Diptych, 15 x 15 cm each | 6 x 6 in each
Teeth made of wood or so I was told, 2023
Acrylic and oil on canvas
170 x 140 cm | 55 x 70 in