Born in 1998 in London, UK. Lives and works in London, UK.

“My work centres on cultivating narratives of symbiosis and harmony. Weaving humanity, so long divorced from the ecosystem of which we are a part, back into the great web of life that makes this planet. I draw on symbols and imagery from the folklore of these islands to create my own images and objects that become votive, animistic items, encouraging connection to and conversation with place and it’s more-than-human inhabitants. I have recently become interested with concepts of language, and how we can turn back to symbolism, imagery and the tactile as a way of creating avenues of communication with the land.”

Nooka Shepherd’s practice is the creation of her living, internal landscape. Nooka is interested in the intimate; the handmade and the obsessional. Her works in paint, sculpture and embroidery aim to communicate a deeply personal relationship to the natural world. Through the use of metaphor, symmetry and obsessive mark making she aims to understand a connection to what she perceives to be an animate world, using creative process as a means of communication with more than human forms of life. Nooka also aims to break down temporal barriers, to speak across time and space. There is a marked focus within her work upon femininity, matrilineal ancestry, gestation and fertility, her practice becoming a medium for connecting with those who have gone before, reaching back beyond the human to our animal, plant and microbial ancestors.

Her work primarily takes form as paintings, drawings, embroidery and ceramic, viewing the creative act as one of revelation and communication into the unseen spheres of reality.

Shepherd got her BFA Painting at Slade School of Art, and their work has been presented in group shows like ‘Objects Lost, Treasures Found’, Underground Flower Offspace (London, 2021); ‘Class of 2020’, The Hari Hotel (London, 2020); ‘Melon-Cauli’, Asylum Chapel (London, 2019).