Artist Links Past and Present By Painting Portraits on Persian Rugs

Carpets are, in and of themselves, already an intricate art form, but Mateo Humano takes the practice a step further. For years, the French artist has reimagined the relationship between modern, ornamental, and traditional craft, painting highly contemporary portraits of women upon Persian rugs. The result, as Humano himself writes, is a striking mix of “urban art and the heritage of ancient cultures,” establishing a clear lineage between the past and the present.

But that sense of continuity isn’t only theoretical: each rug that Humano encounters offers a singular landscape upon which to paint. In this way, his various portraits aren’t simply superimposed over a rug’s pattern, but are instead integrated into its very fabric. One recent artwork, for instance, depicts a woman shrouded in a thin veil, her piercing eyes gazing out toward us. Despite being visible, her facial features don’t seek to distract or disturb, seamlessly melting into the rug’s folds and curves. Even the rug’s blue and gold ornamentation and organic forms complement Humano’s portrait, almost resembling a tattoo meticulously inked across the woman’s face.

“Playing with texture and textile, I used the folds to conceal and reveal, blurring the line between portrait, pattern, and fabrics,” Humano explains. “Her face hides within the folds, woven into the fabric like a secret.”

Humano’s focus on women isn’t unintentional, either. Given their historic association with domesticity, rugs, carpets, weaving, and textiles alike have all often fallen into the purview of women, whose labor wasn’t seen as artistic but as necessary handiwork. In Humano’s work, women are far from anonymous or invisible—they’re untangled from the thread and visually elevated to the rug’s forefront.

“By adding a human element, following the exact rules of symmetry present in a carpet and in a face, these works touch our deep being, our universal consciousness,” Humano said in a video shared by the Sharjah Art Museum in the UAE. “They question our cultural identity currently cannibalized by standardization and mass culture.”

Despite his preference for more feminine portraits, Humano does also veer into other subjects. Another recent artwork incorporates two doves as a motif that represents, as the artist writes, a “whispering harmony.” Here, the doves are rendered with less opacity than usual, their feathered bodies covered in a blue-green tone that resembles aging copper. They perch upon a blooming flower, above which the rug’s patterns are also visible. There’s a tenderness to this composition, and a greater emphasis on the rug itself, with Humano largely maintaining its red and blue patterning.

“[Painted rugs] reflect an amazing way to pay homage to diversity in human culture,” Humano has said, “claiming that uniformity is detrimental to our history and memory.”

To learn more about the artist, visit Mateo Humano’s website and follow him on Instagram.