Shoneize Akhtar (b. 1983, Bhopal, India) is a Mumbai-based contemporary artist whose painting practice draws deeply from personal memory, domestic life, and emotional inheritance. Self-taught, Akhtar’s visual language was shaped early on by growing up in her ancestral home in Bhopal, surrounded by the evocative paintings of her uncle, artist Nasim. This formative environment fostered a sensitivity to gesture, intimacy, and quiet emotional exchange that continues to define her work.

She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of Mumbai (2003). Her practice is deeply autobiographical, shaped by her lived experience as a woman and working mother. Through scenes of domestic interiors and everyday urban life, Akhtar explores themes of maternal strength, nostalgia, resilience, and intergenerational connection. Her paintings attend closely to overlooked moments—tender gestures, fleeting expressions, and the subtle emotional currents that flow through ordinary life—rendered with instinct and emotional honesty.

Akhtar approaches painting as a contemplative and archival act, creating what she describes as a visual diary. Her works function as repositories of lived experience, examining how personal histories reside within the body and how domestic spaces absorb, reflect, and carry emotional memory. Characterised by softened forms, restrained palettes, and a gentle melancholy reminiscent of Gauguin-like figuration, her paintings elevate everyday life into scenes of quiet psychological depth.