The Portrait

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 2025, portraiture has become more than an art form, it is testimony. It is resistance. It is a sanctuary where the individual is held, seen, and remembered.

The past year has been defined by geopolitical upheaval. Elections in the U.S., India, the EU, and several African nations have redrawn political landscapes. Shifting alliances, from BRICS expansion to renewed tensions between China and Western powers, have signalled the rise of a multipolar world order. Meanwhile, fears of a global trade war simmer beneath supply chain disruptions, tech sanctions, and climate-related migration crises.

In this fractured global moment, portraiture offers something rare: stillness, specificity, and humanity. It allows us to zoom in on the individual, to move from the abstract to the intimate.

Artists across the world are responding. South African photographer Zanele Muholi continues to document queer Black identities with striking dignity, countering erasure with presence. Their portraits are not just art, they are political declarations. In Iran, amidst protests and repression, anonymous artists have risked their lives capturing faces of dissent in graffiti and digital media. Their work transcends aesthetics; it becomes a record of resistance.

In the UK, Paul Wright's expressive, energetic paintings beautifully balance abstraction and representation. His works display a brilliant understanding of how pigments reflect light, and despite the bold contrast of strokes laid against one another, a clear image still rings through the harmoniously orchestrated palette. His work is more than technical brilliance or figuration for the sake of it. He pushes himself harder to explore the soul or, at times, human consciousness. He doesn’t restrict himself to skin colour or a particular heritage, his theme is simply the Human condition. 

Wright’s peers and those who have gone before have often attacked the consideration of the Human condition with ferocity and great skill. Painters such as Jenny Saville or Lucian Freud. By comparison Wright’s work has humility and forgiveness. Equally at home with intimacy, humour or serious reflection.

In the West, the work of Jordan Casteel and Toyin Ojih Odutola has redefined portraiture as a dialogue not just between viewer and subject, but between histories, geographies, and identities. Casteel’s vivid, empathetic paintings of Black and Brown individuals in their daily environments reassert visibility in a culture that too often overlooks.

Even in digital spaces, portraiture is evolving. The rise of AI-generated self-portraits on platforms like Lensa or Midjourney has sparked debate about authenticity and agency. Artists like Refik Anadol have explored data-driven portraiture through immersive installations, questioning what it means to represent a self in the age of surveillance and deepfakes.

And still, people yearn to be seen, not just captured, but understood.

Portraiture in 2025 is not a passive act. It is a confrontation with complexity. It asks: Who are you, beyond the narrative imposed on you? In an era when identity is politicised, digitised, and often weaponised, to render a face in paint, in pixels, in film is to reclaim that identity.

In the end, what people seek most today is not just stability, but recognition. Amid the chaos of geopolitics and the hum of machines, a portrait says: This person matters. Their story matters. And that may be one of the most radical acts of our time.

 

 

 

 

If portraiture has long been a mirror of identity, then in 2025, it must also become a window: a way of seeing into others rather than merely reflecting ourselves.

In a time marked by division culturally, racially, politically portraiture has an extraordinary potential: to humanise across boundaries. To soften hardened worldviews. To build bridges where words may fail.

When we look into another’s face, truly look, it becomes harder to maintain the illusion of separation. The face, in all its vulnerability and variation, dismantles caricature. It demands we let go of monoliths and reckon with the nuance of actual lives.

This is where portraiture transcends art and becomes activism, empathy, even diplomacy.

Community-based portrait projects have begun to emerge around the world with precisely this goal. Initiatives like Inside Out Project by JR, which pastes large-scale portraits of everyday people in public spaces, create unexpected encounters with humanity in places often marked by conflict or disconnection. In refugee camps, conflict zones, and divided cities, these portraits challenge the narratives of “us” and “them.”

In Belfast, artists have replaced politically charged murals with collaborative portraits of local youth from both Catholic and Protestant backgrounds, not erasing the past, but reframing the future.

Museums and galleries, too, are reimagining how portraiture can be participatory. Projects inviting marginalised communities to represent themselves, not be represented to create space for self-definition. The power dynamic shifts: the sitter becomes the author, the canvas a stage for storytelling rather than stereotyping.

And in schools, therapeutic art programs that teach portrait-making are giving students the tools to understand not just each other, but themselves, visually exploring empathy, identity, and belonging in ways that transcend language.

So what is our call to action?

It is to use portraiture ,whether we are artists or simply viewers, to draw near, not divide. To commission, create, and share portraits that amplify unheard voices. To invite the unfamiliar in, and look it in the eye.

It is to remind ourselves that no policy, no ideology, no algorithm can replace the quiet, radical act of seeing someone. Not for who we assume they are, but for who they are willing to show us, if we let them.

Because in a world fraying at the edges, maybe the most political thing we can do is to hold each other’s faces gently, in paint, in lens, in memory, and say: I see you. And you belong here too.

In an era marked by division whether culturally, racially, or politically, portraiture emerges as a unifying force, transcending boundaries and fostering social cohesion. Artists across the globe are harnessing the power of the human visage to bridge differences and celebrate our shared humanity.

In the United Kingdom, Paul Wright's expressive portraits capture the essence of his subjects through dynamic brushwork, emphasising the universal human experience beyond specific identities.

Similarly, British artist Nahem Shoa is renowned for his "Giant Heads" series, featuring larger-than-life portraits of individuals from diverse backgrounds. By focusing on the individual, Shoa challenges viewers to confront their perceptions and biases, promoting a deeper understanding of multicultural Britain.  

In the Middle East, Syrian-born British artist Sara Shamma addresses themes of conflict and displacement. Her poignant portraits reflect the emotional and physical toll of war, humanising the experiences of those affected and fostering empathy across cultural divides.  

Egyptian photographer Youssef Nabil employs hand-coloured photography to evoke a sense of timelessness, capturing subjects from various backgrounds. His work bridges the gap between past and present, East and West, highlighting the interconnectedness of human experiences.  

These artists exemplify how portraiture can serve as a catalyst for social good, encouraging viewers to look beyond superficial differences and recognise the common threads that unite us all. By engaging with such works, we are invited to participate in a collective call to action: to see, understand, and embrace the rich tapestry of human diversity.

 

For centuries, portraiture has been the domain of the elite. Historically, it served as a tool of power, a carefully composed assertion of wealth, lineage, and control. Monarchs in ermine, industrialists in gilt frames, scholars lit by borrowed halos of Western enlightenment. Art institutions, steeped in tradition, preserved this legacy with reverence. To be painted was to be immortalised. And to be immortalised was a privilege reserved for the few.

But in 2025, that legacy feels increasingly out of step with the world it claims to reflect.

In an age where social media offers a constant feed of curated self-image ,where wealth is flaunted not in oil paint but in pixels, algorithms, and viral status, the idea of the portrait as a static marker of privilege feels redundant, even regressive. If anything, the hunger today is not for aggrandisement but authenticity.

The institutions ,galleries, academies, funding bodies ,must reckon with this shift. Many still treat figurative painting and portraiture as a conservative form, a symbol of art’s past rather than its future. And yet, the world beyond their walls tells a different story. Portraiture is being radically redefined, by artists who are choosing empathy over ego, connection over canon.

What the genre needs now is not preservation, but liberation.

It must be uncoupled from its historical marriage to class and reimagined as a vital, responsive, human-first practice. Portraiture today has the potential to reflect not just the surface of a person, but their context ,the emotional, political, cultural landscape they inhabit. It can challenge bias. It can offer refuge. It can provoke reckoning. But only if those who fund, curate, and validate art are willing to expand their understanding of what the portrait is and what it can do.

Imagine national portrait galleries filled not only with heads of state, but with healthcare workers, refugees, community leaders, students, survivors ,each painted with the same gravity once reserved for nobility. Imagine if we celebrated the truth of a face over the status it represents.

This is not an abandonment of tradition. It is its natural evolution.

Art institutions have a choice: to double down on outdated hierarchies of value, or to step forward and support a genre that is no longer about who has the power, but about who needs to be seen.

Let us call for a portraiture of this moment ,one that dares to hold the fragile, the ordinary, the marginalised, and the joyous in equal measure. One that meets the world where it is, and reflects it not with judgment or nostalgia, but with honesty and care.

Because in the end, the portrait that will last, the one future generations will look back on, is not the one that shouts, “Look how rich I was,” but the one that whispers, “Look how human we were.”

 

In 2025, portraiture stands at a threshold. Once a genre bound to status, wealth, and institutional reverence, it now holds unprecedented potential to act as a social force—a mirror for our shared humanity, and a rallying space for equity, empathy, and inclusion.

We are living through turbulent times. In the wake of widespread elections and shifting geopolitical tensions—from the expansion of BRICS and the tech sanctions of a looming trade war to climate-fuelled migration and ideological polarisation—the global fabric feels frayed. Trust in stability has been shaken. Institutions wobble. People are searching not only for answers, but for connection.

In this moment of fragmentation, portraiture offers stillness and specificity. It draws our focus away from abstraction and ideology and back to the human face. It refuses anonymity. It insists: this person matters.

Across continents, artists are responding. These artists, and many more, use portraiture not to divide or idealise, but to connect, across culture, across experience, across time. In communities from Belfast to Beirut, artists are using portraiture to dismantle conflict narratives. And in classrooms and refugee camps, portrait-making is a tool for emotional literacy and healing.

But while the grassroots embrace this evolving role of portraiture, many institutions have yet to catch up.

Too often, portraiture remains framed in the trappings of its aristocratic past. Museum walls are still dominated by oil-rendered tributes to power and prestige. Art history curricula continue to elevate Eurocentric, male-dominated narratives. Exhibitions too frequently separate us by category—by identity, by geography, by trauma—rather than uniting us in our complexity.

If we are to build a more equitable, inclusive artistic future, this must change.

Portraiture is no longer about legacy; it is about presence. It is no longer a celebration of the powerful, but a reckoning with who we overlook. It is not about the sitter’s status, but about their story.

Art institutions have a critical role to play in this transformation. They must broaden their definitions of excellence and importance. They must fund, commission, and exhibit work that reflects the diversity of human experience in its fullness—not through tokenism or trend, but through an ethical, ongoing commitment to justice and representation.

We need to support artists who look not just at difference, but at common ground. Who use portraiture to build bridges—between neighbours, between histories, between selves.

This is a call for portraiture that reflects the world as it is, and as it could be.

A call for exhibitions that don’t isolate by category or compete for attention through identity, but that weave us together. Can it be less about the colour of our skin or gender preference to more about our universalities, our common ground. We are all at some point, just Sons and Daughters. We have our own agency and we can celebrate our differences but maybe it’s time to show more of what connects us. 

We no longer need to just tick boxes for exhibitions that show how we are different. We need exhibits that remind us how deeply we are the at the core, the same. We have different lived experiences that shape us and we need to understand and listen to those in each other. But what if we also celebrated our likeness? What if we filled our institutions with individual lived experiences alongside what connects us. In such a polarised world where loneliness, isolation and distrust are the default then don’t we have a responsibility to encourage social cohesion. What is it that links us, not just what separates us?

This is the beginning of a quiet revolution—a grassroots movement rooted in the oldest artistic gesture: to look at another, and to see them.

Let this be the moment we reclaim the portrait.

Let this be the moment we see our universalities.

Let this be the moment we create a global portrait.

Let this be the moment we take agency and move closer together.

An equitable life. That would be a revolution.

 

 Jeni Weinberger