Three Ways Contemporary Artists Are Redefining Portraiture: Staging, Symbolic Materials, and Cultural Fusion

Contemporary portraiture has moved decisively beyond physical likeness. Today's portrait artists are staging photographs like films, building likenesses out of candy, and recasting old master paintings with contemporary Black subjects. Drawing on descriptions of artists' practices from several art publications, three distinct strategies emerge: conceptual staging in photography, material symbolism in sculpture and mixed media, and the fusion of cultural heritage with modern styles. Lorna Simpson, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and Oluwole Omofemi each exemplify one of these shifts, while Kehinde Wiley shows how cultural fusion can challenge the historical canon itself.

Beyond Likeness: The Evolution of Contemporary Portraiture

The traditional portrait promised a faithful record of a sitter's face. That promise is exactly what contemporary artists have dismantled. Writing in Art21 Magazine about the Katonah Museum of Art's exhibition Eye to I, educator Joe Fusaro praised a show that "provokes visitors to reconsider what a portrait is, does, and can be." His point applies broadly: when likeness is no longer the measure, a portrait can be a staged narrative, a pile of candy, or a painting that borrows its pose from a European old master. Identity, memory, and representation become the real subjects.

Conceptual Staging: Crafting Narratives Through Photography

Rather than capturing a found moment, staged photographers construct the scene entirely. Jeff Wall, born in Vancouver in 1946, is described by Contemporary Art Issue as merging photography's documentary traditions with the conceptual strategies of painting, cinema, and literature. Wall calls his approach "cinematography," building meticulously staged large-scale tableaux alongside what he terms "near documentaries"—carefully reenacted scenes inspired by real observations. "I begin by not photographing," Wall has said, a phrase that captures his reflective, process-driven method.

Lorna Simpson, born in Brooklyn in 1960, pushed staging further by adding text. Emerging in the late 1980s and early 1990s as a leading voice in conceptual photography, she combined staged photography with written language to challenge assumptions about the neutrality of both images and words. "I am interested in the way that the photograph has been used in our culture as a document of fact," Simpson has said, "and how it has shaped collective memory." Her portraits interrogate identity, race, and gender rather than record a face.

Material Symbolism: Unconventional Mediums and Meaning

Material symbolism relocates the portrait's meaning from the depicted body into the substance of the work itself. Felix Gonzalez-Torres's Untitled (Portrait of Dad) is the clearest case. As Fusaro described it in Art21 Magazine, "It's an interactive piece that actually allows the viewer to take something away. But it doesn't depict the person; it's just a pile of candy. Then you realize what the candy represents and all of the connections—the weight and this idea of giving." A portrait can exist without depicting anyone at all; the medium carries the memory and the relationship.

Cultural Fusion: Weaving Heritage into Modern Identity

A third strategy fuses inherited traditions with contemporary subjects. Writing at MoMAA, an affordable art gallery and lifestyle platform, an editor describes how many African artists incorporate "symbols, motifs, and traditional aesthetics" into their works to reflect their identities and community histories, creating "a distinct visual language that sets their work apart from conventional Western portraiture." The Ethiopian-born photographer Aïda Muluneh, for example, incorporates traditional Ethiopian body painting and motifs into her photographs.

Nigerian painter Oluwole Omofemi works in the same current from the painted side. Described by MoMAA's editor as a contemporary Nigerian artist redefining portraiture, Omofemi is known for vibrant, expressive paintings that celebrate African beauty, culture, and identity, marked by bold colors, dramatic brushstrokes, and powerful imagery. His work contributes to an ongoing dialogue about representation and self-expression within the art world.

Kehinde Wiley takes fusion into the heart of Western art history. The Studio Museum in Harlem describes Wiley, born in 1977 and a 2001–02 artist in residence there, as "known for painting portraits of Black figures in the likeness of old master paintings against vivid, patterned backgrounds." Writing at THIS IS BLACK, author Lexie observes that by painting contemporary Black figures in classic art-historical poses, Wiley "unapologetically lets the viewer know that black people are here, regal, and have a rightful place in the artistic firmament."

Comparative Strategies in Contemporary Portraiture

Placing the featured artists side by side along three axes—medium, conceptual strategy, and thematic concern—makes the distinct innovations legible. Each row below reflects the artistic practices as described in the cited art publications; the selection is illustrative of key trends rather than a ranking of influence.

Three artists, three strategies of redefined portraiture
Artist	Primary Medium	Conceptual Strategy	Theme / Focus
Lorna Simpson	Staged photography with text	Combines staged images and written language to challenge the assumed neutrality of image and word; treats the photograph as a cultural document rather than a record of fact	Identity, race, gender, and how photography shapes collective memory
Oluwole Omofemi	Expressive painting with bold colors and dramatic brushstrokes	Fuses African cultural heritage with a vibrant contemporary style	Celebrating African beauty, culture, and identity; representation and self-expression
Kehinde Wiley	Large-scale oil painting	Recontextualizes old master poses and vivid patterned backgrounds for contemporary Black figures	Inserting Black faces into historical white spaces and into the canon of painting

The table clarifies why these practices count as redefinition rather than variation. Simpson challenges what a photographic portrait claims to document; Omofemi challenges whose beauty painting celebrates; Wiley challenges who gets to occupy the heroic poses of art history. In an interview with Kadish Morris in the Guardian, Wiley framed his work alongside other African American artists such as Kerry James Marshall, Amy Sherald, and Jordan Casteel, as an inclusionary project: "It's an opportunity for people who traditionally have had very little relationship to museums and to what's on their walls, to feel themselves included."

The Enduring Impact of Redefined Portraiture

Together, these strategies shift portraiture from a genre of record to a genre of argument. Simpson's staged photographs question the photograph as a "document of fact." Gonzalez-Torres's candy portrait replaces depiction with shared, dwindling material. Omofemi and Wiley use paint—portraiture's most traditional vehicle—to assert identities long underrepresented in museums, with Wiley's approach described in the Guardian as inserting Black faces "into historical white spaces and thus also into the canon of painting." The expansion is ongoing: Wiley told the Guardian he is working on sculpture next, for a major show in Italy, after past bronze busts and his three-channel film Narrenschiff (2017).

Navigating the New Landscape of Portraiture

Readers should approach contemporary portraits with an awareness of the artist's conceptual intent, material choices, and cultural references, rather than solely focusing on physical likeness. The selection here is illustrative, drawn from published descriptions of artists' practices rather than original interviews, and it is not an exhaustive survey of important portrait artists. A practical measure of understanding: the reader can identify and articulate at least two distinct strategies—conceptual staging and cultural fusion, for example—and name an artist exemplifying each, such as Lorna Simpson for staged photography or Kehinde Wiley for the fusion of old master poses with contemporary Black subjects, when viewing a contemporary portrait.

Sources

Redefining Portraiture - Art21 Magazine — Art21 Magazine - An online space for insightful writing on contemporary art and artists
Top 30 Fine Art Photography Artists in the World — CAI — Contemporary Art Issue - Magazine & Educational Art Platform
Redefining Portraiture: African Artists Pushing Boundaries — MoMAA | Affordable Art Gallery & Lifestyle
Kehinde Wiley — Studio Museum in Harlem
Kehinde Wiley — THIS IS BLACK
Artist Kehinde Wiley — the Guardian

Three Ways Contemporary Artists Are Redefining Portraiture: Staging, Symbolic Materials, and Cultural Fusion

Beyond Likeness: The Evolution of Contemporary Portraiture

Conceptual Staging: Crafting Narratives Through Photography

Material Symbolism: Unconventional Mediums and Meaning

Cultural Fusion: Weaving Heritage into Modern Identity

Comparative Strategies in Contemporary Portraiture

The Enduring Impact of Redefined Portraiture

Navigating the New Landscape of Portraiture

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