Nimah Gobir
is an artist and educator based in Oakland, California.
Nimah Gobir makes paintings about family, memory, and Black identity. She works from stories she’s heard and photos her family has kept, layering them with household textiles, embroidery, and expressive brushwork.
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She is interested in how memory lives in objects, gestures, and rooms. Through portraits of her sister and herself getting their hair braided, or her parents seated on a hand-me-down couch, she tells stories that are both deeply specific and widely shared.
Gobir completed her undergraduate studies at Chapman University with a B.F.A. in Studio Art and B.A. in Peace Studies. She has an M.Ed from Harvard Graduate School of Education with a focus in Arts in Education. In 2020, she completed a fellowship with Emerging Artist Professionals SF-Bay Area. She has shown work at the Museum of the African Diaspora, SOMArts, The Growlery, Root Division where she was awarded the Blau-Gold Studio/Teaching fellowship. She is represented by Johansson Projects.
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For project inquiries // studio visits:
nimahgobir@gmail.com
Recognition
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2026 Anderson Ranch Residency
2025 Fleishhacker Foundation Eureka Fellowship Nominee
2024 Bennet Prize Finalist
2024 SFMOMA SECA Finalist
2024 Recology Artist Residency
2024 Headlands Center for the Arts Tournesol Awardee
2024 Museum of the African Diaspora Emerging Artist Program
2022 Fleishhacker Foundation Eureka Fellowship Nominee
2019 Emerging Artist Professionals Fellowship
2018 The Growlery Artist Residency
2018 Blau Gold Fellow Studio-Artist Fellowship
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2024 FOG Art + Design Fair, Fort Mason Center, San Francisco, CA
2024 So Far, So Good, Recology, San Francisco, CA
2023 Holding Space, Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, CA
2022 Spools, Johansson Projects, Oakland, CA
2021 Old House, FM Oakland, Oakland, CA
2019 Tender-headed and Other Works, The Growlery, San Francisco, CA
2015 I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!, Guggenheim Gallery, Orange, CA
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Selected Group Exhibitions
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2024 Minted, Tinted, Johansson Projects, Oakland, CA
2023 Facing Home, Euphrat Museum of Art
2023 The Black Woman is God: Motherhood, San Francisco, CA
2023 Platform by David Zwirner
2022 20-Year Anniversary Alumni Exhibition, San Francisco, CA
2021 The Black Woman is God, San Francisco, CA
2020 Until It Shatters, San Francisco, CA
2018 Non-Sterile Art Happenings, Cambridge, MA
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