Picnic

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.