Born in 1999, Niah McGiff is a London-based artist whose paintings and poems use the figure as a site of painterly interrogation to explore interior emotional and psychological states.

She trained at the Essential School of Painting, graduating with distinction from the Foundation Diploma in 2019, and went on to study Fine Art at Chelsea College of Arts, University of the Arts London.

McGiff's recent body of work, GRAVITY, will be shown in a solo exhibition in London this year, followed by a second presentation in September at Art Floor, an independent gallery in Taipei, Taiwan. She is also curating and exhibiting in Common Matter, on June 11th at One Navigator Square, Archway. Tickets are available via DICE: 

https://dice.fm/event/py89ok-common-matter-11th-jun-the-dance-hall-archway-n19-london-tickets

Niah has recently exhibited in, curated and organised an exhibition called Flesh and Pixel in Alexandra Palace.

Her work has been shown in and co-curated group exhibitions including ESOP Summer Show (2019, 2023), ILLASOUL UK x Extinction Rebellion (2019), Divergence (2019), Mind the Gap (2021), The Animal Arts Space - Virtual Exhibition (2025), CollectArts - Autumn Magazine (2025), CistaArts - Entangled Geographies (2025), Spira9 - Everything Then is Now (in partnership with The London Design Festival and Frieze, 2025). 

Artist Statement 

I don’t think the work can be fully translated into language. That gap is part of the point: the distance between what is felt and what can be said. Philosopher Joseph Levine names this the “explanatory gap,” and my practice moves within that space, using material and gesture to approach what resists articulation.

Still, there is a pressure to account for the work in words. What follows is an attempt to trace it, however incompletely.

I grew up in England with mixed Asian heritage, and questions of belonging have always shaped the way I think about identity and emotional life. My practice has largely centred on figuration, using the body as a site to explore psychological states and the tensions that emerge within relationships, memory and self-perception.

In many of my paintings the figure appears unstable or partially dissolving. I am interested in how the body can hold emotional weight without needing to describe a clear narrative. By allowing forms to break down or drift between representation and abstraction, the figure becomes a space where inner experience can surface in less controlled ways.

Fundamentally my practice is concerned with the materiality of paint itself. Through working and reworking the surface, I explore how gesture, colour and texture can carry emotional meaning where language begins to fall short.

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