Self-Portrait, 2006/2024

This self-portrait edition by Santiago Sierra presents a stripped-down, quietly subversive image: the artist photographed from behind, his shaved head and dark sweater stark against a white wall. In line with a recurring theme throughout Sierra’s practice, the refusal to show the face is a deliberate act. “The idea that not showing is more powerful than doing so” underpins much of his work, in which subjects are frequently hidden, anonymized, or obscured. Here, the absence of identifiable features functions as a kind of anti-portrait – resisting the conventions of self-representation and reinforcing Sierra’s broader interrogation of visibility, control, and the dehumanizing systems embedded in both art and society.