Born in Oakland, nahkoura is an emerging artist based in Berkeley, California. She has been making art since she was a young child and earned her B.A. in art practice at UC Berkeley in 2017. While at Berkeley, she was awarded an Honors Studio and an exhibition at the Worth Ryder Gallery. Her work has been exhibited at Chandra Cerrito / Art Advisors (Oakland, CA), Root Division (San Francisco, CA), Omi Gallery (Oakland, CA), and the Studio Gallery (Clarkston, GA). nahkoura came to love painting by doing nail art for three years. She continues to prefer painting on a small scale and her paintings of patterns focus on achieving meditative and aesthetic perfection. Outside of her art practice, nahkoura works in museums around the San Francisco Bay Area as a preparator/art handler/body for others’ art.
As a person who does art, I’m still discovering myself – my style, my subjects, my life – but one common theme that I seem to be drawn to is myself – my face, my body, my clothes. That’s because I’m my easiest subject. For the most part, I know what I look like. That’s a huge help with technical skill when working with things like color in my paintings, or anatomy in my sculptures. I’m focusing on the technical because I haven’t found a reason for doing what I do. For right now since I don’t have much to focus on with the conceptual part of my practice, I’m seeing how I can better myself with the technical aspects of it. Beyond my depictions of myself, I’m drawn to bright color, smooth gradients, straight lines, and repetitive patterns when painting. I believe that it’s linked somewhat to my desire for everything to be highly regimented. Generally, I spend more time being absorbed in the process than figuring out what the end product will be. When I get too process-driven, I usually end up not liking the work, so I’m constantly trying to find that balance. I’m also very attracted to the idea of doing things by hand. While it’s true that I could use a computer and make everything fit together and be just the right color, I feel pushed to train my eyes to be computers. I want to be a computer.