Frida Orupabo

Overview

Using archival and historical imagery, Orupabo's collaged, photographic portraits and video works explore race, ender and familial identites.

Drawing on her background in sociology, Orupabo excavates found images, colonial

archives, and other digital sources to create collages that confront questions of visual

identity. Her multidisciplinary practice is an exercise in disrupting mainstream

representations of Black women and their bodies. Orupabo cuts and splices images into

disjointed, and at times unsettling, forms, pointing to the layered, fragile composition of

the self. Central to her practice, this intentional fragmentation resists monolithic notions

of identity and suggests a more intersectional, nuanced approach.

Artist website

Works

Biography

b. 1986, Sarpsborg, Norway

Frida Orupabo is a Nigerian Norwegian artist who lives and works in Oslo, Norway.

Drawing on her background in sociology, Orupabo excavates found images, colonial archives, and other digital sources to create collages that confront questions of visual identity. Her multidisciplinary practice is an exercise in disrupting mainstream representations of Black women and their bodies. Orupabo cuts and splices images into disjointed, and at times unsettling, forms, pointing to the layered, fragile composition of the self. Central to her practice, this intentional fragmentation resists monolithic notions of identity and suggests a more intersectional, nuanced approach.

Solo exhibitions include All is broken in the night, Galerie Nordenhake, Berlin (2024); Things I saw at night, Modern Art, London (2023); Closed up like a fist, Nicola Vassell Gallery, New York (2022) and Frida Orupabo, 34 São Paulo Biennial, Museu Afro Brasil (2021). Group exhibitions include Her Voice Echoes of Chantal Akerman, Fotomuseum, Antwerp (2023); Rested, Nicola Vassell Gallery, New York (2021); We Fight to Build a Free World, Jewish Museum, New York (2020) and Niepodlegle: Women, Independence and National Discourse, Museum of Modern Art Warsaw (2018). Orupabo’s work is in the collections of The Studio Museum in Harlem, Astrup Fearnley Museum, Huis Marseilles, KADIST Foundation, Paris / San Francisco, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Moderna Museet, Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Museum Ludwig, National Museum, Oslo, Nordenfjeldske Kunstindustrimuseum, Perez Art Museum, Preus Museum, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,Turku Art Museum, Alexander Tutsek Foundation, Munich, The Dean Collection, and Marieluise Hessel Foundation.