Riah shah

Ria Shah (b.2001) is a Kenyan-British multidisciplinary artist based between London and Kenya. Her practice investigates memory, cultural identity, and the layered legacy of Kenya’s tourism industry, drawing from family history, traditional craft, and contemporary African aesthetics. She holds a BA in Fine Art (Upper Second Class Honours) from Loughborough University, a Higher National Diploma in Fine Art from the Northern School of Art and Design, and completed an Art Foundation Course at the same institution under the University of the Arts London.

Growing up surrounded by vivid stories of adventure, nature, and resilience within a family rooted in Kenya, she developed a deep sensitivity to narrative and environment. Her materials, oil paint, acrylics, permanent black marker, and marbling reflect this duality of tradition and modernity. Oil painting allows her to echo ancestral methods, while the vibrancy of acrylics gives her space to explore more urgent, contemporary themes. She often integrates marbling inspired by African fabrics, and sharp black linework that gives structure and clarity to the fluidity of her compositions. These images are reframed to engage broader conversations about the cultural, economic, and emotional entanglements between tourism and identity in East Africa.

Rias recent work explores how personal and collective memories can be archived through tactile, material processes. She is particularly interested in how textiles, ornamentation, and inherited objects carry stories across generations. Her compositions often blur the boundary between documentation and imagination, offering alternative visual histories that challenge colonial representations of Kenya and its people.