The Inner Child That’s Always With Us. (Noorain Inam)

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Noorain Inam dives into the places between memory and imagination, creating emotionally charged worlds where childhood fears, familiar places, and unanswered questions continue to follow us. 

Noorain Inam creates worlds where desires, fears, memories, dreams, and aspirations seem to exist all at once. Her work explores the ways our experiences shape who we become, while also holding onto the parts of ourselves that never fully disappear. There is a sense of familiarity within her paintings, but it is constantly interrupted by something strange, almost as if the viewer is looking at a memory they recognize but cannot completely place. 

A common theme throughout Inam’s work is phantasm, or the product of an imagination or perceived illusion. Her paintings are filled with imagery that feels both familiar and unfamiliar, creating a desire to move closer while simultaneously feeling like something is telling you to stay away. That tension is part of what makes her work so engaging. You want to understand what you're looking at, but the more you look, the more questions seem to appear, and the more drawn in you become. 

Inam often pulls from her own experiences, explaining that she has always drawn from what surrounds her and her lived experiences. As we grow older, many of the superstitions and beliefs we once held onto begin to fade, but Inam suggests that we still carry them with us, just in ways that feel more grounded to our adult minds. Her work exists within that space between what we believe and what we can actually explain. 

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Horror also plays a major role in shaping her artistic language. Between watching classics or reading Mary Shelley and Edgar Allan Poe, she has always been drawn to the covers and details of scenes that create that eerie feeling we all know and the objects she chooses to use within her work creates a sense of familiarity. Homes are a common object seen for she describes them as “trap doors” and “places of emotional suspension that belong to everyone and no one.” Horses also appear throughout her work, representing emotional volatility, freedom, fear, fragility, and movement. Having grown up around them, Inam has always gravitated towards the way horses reflect emotion and energy. 

Despite the intensity within her paintings, Noorain Inam values silence and time alone with her thoughts. She explains that her ideas often come when she is away from noise, sometimes living with them for years. Maybe that is what makes her work feel so emotionally layered, because it gives space to the things we carry quietly, including childhood fears, old beliefs, memories, and questions that never completely leave us. Her paintings remind us that growing up does not mean leaving parts of ourselves behind.