Art Talks #3 Recap: "From Frames to Feeds – A Short History of Faces"

Good to see your face, again! - (Pun intended)

On September 7, we met again for Art Talks Prague, this time with a theme that feels both ancient and instantly familiar: From Frames to Feed – A Short History of Faces.

The evening was playful and thought-provoking, moving from Fayum mummy portraits to Instagram selfies, asking what portraits really say about us — and what they hide.

What We Explored

Portraits are never just faces. They’re statements of power, memory, and identity. Centuries ago, a portrait required wealth, patience, and the hand of a skilled painter. Today, anyone with a phone can make one in seconds. 

But the core questions remain the same:

How do I want the world to see me?

What story do I want to tell?

Am I showing power, beauty, intimacy, or something else?

Together, we traced portraits across time to see how answers to these questions have changed — and how they’ve stayed the same.

Portraits Through Time

🖼 Ancient Portraits — Fayum Mummies

Placed over the faces of the dead, these Roman-Egyptian panels preserved lifelike features for eternity. They remind us that portraits were always about identity — and about how we want to be remembered.

👑 Renaissance Portraits — Power and Wealth

From Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait to Medici commissions, portraits became social currency — visual LinkedIn profiles where clothing, jewelry, and background objects declared influence and status.

🎭 Baroque Self-Exploration — Rembrandt

With nearly 100 self-portraits, Rembrandt turned his own face into an autobiography — recording youth, age, struggle, and resilience with unflinching honesty.

🌸 Modern Identity — Frida Kahlo

Frida transformed portraiture into a diary of the body and soul. Her self-portraits layered pain, culture, and symbolism into images that remain global icons of resilience and identity.

📷 Contemporary Performance — Cindy Sherman & Andy Warhol

Sherman’s staged personas and Warhol’s celebrity silkscreens ask whether portraits reveal truth — or only performance and repetition. They remind us how images can both question and commodify identity.

📱 The Selfie Era

With 92 million selfies taken every day, portraits have become instant, filtered, and everywhere. They’re not just art objects anymore — they’re part of daily life, shaping how we see ourselves and each other.

Interactive Moments

This time, portrait-making wasn’t just something we looked at — it became something we practiced. Everyone paired up, got to know someone new, and then described to the group how they would portray them in a portrait.

The results were creative, colorful, and often funny — from symbolic objects to imagined settings. It was a playful way to see how imaginative everyone is, while also giving us the chance to get to know each other better.

Reflections & Questions

As always, we closed with conversation. Some of the questions that stayed with us:

Are selfies the modern form of portraiture — or something different?

Do filters help us be creative, or do they hide who we really are?

Whose faces get preserved in history — and whose are missing?

What legacy will our digital portraits leave 500 years from now?

Closing Thoughts

From painted panels to Polaroids to posts, portraits have always been about faces telling stories. Whether they express power, vulnerability, or imagination, they remind us that identity is never static — it’s always chosen, performed, and remembered in images.

Thank you to everyone who joined Art Talks #3 for your curiosity and creativity.

What’s Next

Our next session, Art Talks #4 – will take place in October, same place, same time. Date will be announced soon!

Stay tuned — and see you there!

Irem