Hannah Traore Gallery is proud to present Who? Me?, a group exhibition exploring the depth and resilience of contemporary self-portraiture. Curated by founder Hannah Traore, with the invaluable support of Gallery Manager Morgan Mitchell, Who? Me? assembles a bold range of self-portraits across painting, photography, sculpture, and mixed media. This intimate collection of works draws on the lineage of the technique of self-portraiture and expands notions of the practice to include conceptual, sculptural, and performative forms of self-representation.

The formidable, globe-spanning roster of exhibiting artists includes Kesewa Aboah, Turiya Adkins, Bre Andy, Yagazie Emezi, Arlina Cai, Renee Cox, Camila Falquez, Alanna Fields, Samuel Fosso, Luzene Hill, Misha Japanwala, Oluseye, and Anya Paintsil. A majority of the works were produced specifically for this exhibition, and will be presented here for the first time. Together, they reassert of the self as not only image-maker, but as steward of one’s own legacy and living archive. Who? Me? honors the imperative to write one’s own myth and memory for those who choose to remain irreducible in the face of cultural erasure and imposed representation. For several of the exhibiting artists, self-portraiture was a first site of art-making, and their bodies their first available canvas for creation. Kesewa Aboah and Misha Japanwala, for example, both began their careers with self-portraiture before exploring other techniques, and both artists recount their excitement to return to the approach with new perspective and purpose. Who? Me? is a cross-medium survey chronicling the evergreen importance of self-portraiture as a tool for reclaiming identity, visibility, and autonomy.

A key curatorial entrypoint are the featured works by Samuel Fosso, the revered “grandfather of self-portraiture” in West African photography. This selection of Fosso’s legendary black-and-white portraits staged in his studio in 1970s Bangui, Central African Republic sits in conversation with Anya Paintsil’s textile abstractions, and Misha Japanwala’s sculptural embodiments of self. They’re joined by a new piece by Oluseye, whose tactile assemblage maps a waterwork by Arlina Cai, its soft yet saturated aura gently diffuses the artist’s selfhood throughout the atmosphere.

The exhibition’s inspiration began during Traore’s undergraduate education, where the gallerist and curator first engaged with the history of self-portraiture: from Carravaggio’s early paintings to the groundbreaking work of Renee Cox. She was struck by how the approach captured the multivalence of personhood, and the soul. “It struck me, back then, that a self-portrait can be anything, capturing an artist’s essence rather than just their likeness.”

The artist’s gaze, across the works on display, is a striking tool of therapy, rebellion, self-mythology, and storytelling. As viewers look closer, they’re drawn into a shared recognition: an encounter with the vulnerability, defiance, and joy uniquely made possible by the art we make of ourselves.