Frida Orupabo | Photogravures

Frida Orupabo renegotiates questions of representation in three large-scale photogravures based on digital collages.

Two versions of the same image form the basis of Sickbed I and II: the composition is dominated by a massive bed that almost swallows up the female figure lying in it. The resting figure, a recurring motif in Orupabo’s work, references Ghanaian writer Ayi Kwei Armah’s concept of rest as a survival strategy in response to traumatic events.

All elements in Orupabo’s digital collage are riddled with unresolved contradictions: the figure in bed could be resting, but on closer inspection she appears to be fixed to the bedframe. The visual elements that make Orupabo’s composition are charged with tension highlighting a crucial element of Armah’s idea: that after rest, awakening must follow. With that in mind, the bed itself could be interpreted as a place of comfort and rest; but its oversized proportions seem almost threatening as something one cannot escape from.

“I made different versions of this image. Manipulated it and made it into a negative. Making the lightest areas appear darkest and the darkest areas appear lightest. Turning the black subject into a white subject.” – Frida Orupabo

The photogravure Picnic combines pictorial elements that appear to float freely in bright, acidic green against a deep black background. Orupabo frames a woman’s head, a twisted rabbit and a joker card from a historical racist card game in the barely visible outlines of a picnic blanket.

The word picnic, used in multiple languages and seemingly unsuspicious, describes the social act of eating together outdoors. Against the backdrop of the colonial history of the United States, however, it contains different, darker connotation: in the 19th and into the 20th century, it was customary in the southern states of the USA to attend public lynchings of Black Americans and combine them with a picnic.

With this knowledge, the surreal composition’s disparate elements become phantom-like witnesses to a cruel chapter of colonial history. By pointing at the atrocious acts of recent history, Orupabo’s work is a reminder of how questions of social positions and race are embedded in language.

The prints are part of the exhibition All is broken in the night at Galerie Nordenhake, Berlin.