Nóra Somos

About the Artist

Nóra Somos (b. 2001, Hungary) imagines and paints figurative scenes in bold, bright colours. Her oil paintings tell eventful but elusive stories about love, lore, intimacy, fantasy, femininity, rite and death. These pictures might resemble mythologies, or familiar symbolisms, but their narratives are still in formation, relying on people’s personal and collective imagination. 

Exhibitions

BFA Exhibition 2025

12 September – 5 November 2025
Kuva/Tila

About the artwork

My three oil paintings feature imaginary (or real) figures, and stories of their lives (or deaths).

Hunor and Magor in the Womb is an ode to origin myths, and to creation in general. Hunor and Magor, sons of Enéh, ancestors of the Huns and Magyars, were led to their new land by a deer (often depicted with the Sun between its antlers). The name Enéh is derived from the word ünő, meaning a hind in Hungarian. My painting doesn’t tell this tale, it freely wonders about what surrounds, predates and follows it. It wonders about the origins of one who is believed to have created the beginning.

To love in a meadow, with warm wind is a romance. It is serene and turbulent, magical and obvious. And anything and everything in between.

In between leaving and returning is how I imagined the brink of death, but with a happy ending. I thought about a resurrection, whether it could be felt without really dying, turning back at the station between life and death. In other words, it is a meditation on healing, and its tranquillity. Narrated by vivid colours and four characters.