A large-scale version of visual activist Zanele Muholi’s self-portrait Somnyama Ngonyama IV, Oslo, 2015 is currently on display on the eastern façade of the Bærum Kunsthall building near Oslo, Norway. The work was selected as part of the #portrettnå project, an ongoing outdoor contemporary photography series curated by the gallery. The image will be on display until September 2026.

Somnyama Ngonyama, the ongoing self-portraiture series Muholi began in 2012, is, among many other things, about refusing the exoticizing gaze. The images are acts of resistance, referring to personal stories, colonial and Apartheid histories of exclusion and displacement, as well as ongoing racism. This prolific project responds to the near invisibility of Black women and non-binary bodies as subjects of representation in the history of Western painting and portraiture prior to the 20th century.

This series shifts the lens, with Muholi becoming both subject and image-maker – turning the camera on themself to explore the politics of race and representation, and to challenge the often-harmful representations of Black people. Using materials and objects sourced from their surroundings and shot in different locations around the world, Muholi experiments with different characters and archetypes. The guerrilla nature of these images reveals an urgency to document the self. As Muholi has stated, “Portraiture is my daily prayer.”

By increasing the contrast of the images, which has a darkening effect on their skin, Muholi reclaims their Blackness, something they feel is “continuously performed by the privileged other”. Somnyama Ngonyama also pays homage to the plurality and fluidity of the self. For Muholi, their use of the pronouns they/them goes beyond gender identity.

The work was specially selected for #portrettnå by curator Pernille Gjærder Olsen, with assistance from Hannah Ingvoldstad as a way to reiterate the locality of the project. In its massive size, the work considers how the gaze is constructed through their direct stare, challenging the viewer to ask what it means for and when ‘a Black person looks back’.

Previously, photographs by Geir Moseid (Norway) and Jói Kjartans (Iceland) have been displayed as part of the project.