Constructed on the sting of Oslo’s flowing fjord to show one of many largest European collections of—usually difficult—works by probably the most famend names in modern artwork, the Astrup Fearnley Museet appears eminently suited to host On Lies, Secrets and techniques and Silence, a dense exhibition by Norwegian artist Frida Orupabo. Ever the explorer in her uncovering of colonial narratives interwoven in social, financial, and political frameworks, Orupabo emphasizes the historic violence directed at Black our bodies whereas honoring their resilience and company. By means of her creative interventions, she gives alongside her private narratives a nuanced examination of collective expertise, on this case the persistent feeling of outsiderness for individuals of African descent in Europe—a legacy of colonialism. The present takes its title from Adrienne Wealthy’s thought-provoking eponymous prose assortment On Lies, Secrets and techniques, and Silence (1979), which likewise takes up themes of racism, historical past, motherhood, and the politics of language.
The exhibition opens with two fascinating items, Her (2024) and Them (2024), printed textile curtains that set up the ambiance of the biggest gallery. Their massive scales and sensuous supplies are gripping. Her attracts inspiration from an unattributed Nineteen Twenties studio portrait the artist discovered at blackarchives.com of a younger Black lady gazing outward, her expression evoking a way of intriguing ambiguity—neither resignation nor triumph. In Them, we witness an intimate second wherein two girls—one Black, one white—share a kiss, their faces partially hidden by an inset picture. The scene, we be taught, was sourced from Seventies pornography, made at a time when each interracial relationships and homosexuality had been topic to extreme repression. In each works, Orupabo skillfully employs tight cropping, picture repetition, enlarged scales, and/or filtering to recontextualize the unique materials. These creative decisions immediate reflection on the sources’ which means and relevance, and encourage contemplation of id, intimacy, and societal taboos.
Subsequent we encounter Huge Woman I and Huge Woman II (each 2024), the artist’s largest collages to this point, every shut to 3 meters tall. Neither grandiose nor diminutive, they appear designed to underscore the themes’ dignity and significance, inviting nearer inspection and interplay. The intricacies revealed from numerous views provoke psychological reactions of each awe and unease.
Cloud of Confusion (2024), additionally on the bottom ground, presents a grid of twelve pictures wherein Orupabo juxtaposes cartoons with sexualized and colonial representations equivalent to a Black tribal lady along with her again to the photographer. We surprise: Was this African in an equal energy dynamic with the presumably European man who captured her picture? A black metallic teddy bear displayed on a plinth in Jumpy Suits and Facial Tics (2024) symbolizes each childhood solace and lurking menace, echoing the artist’s affinity for horror movies; she once more hints at murderous teddy bears in The Pit (1981) and Imaginary (2024). The linkage of childhood consolation and violence is manifest within the artist’s poignant comment within the exhibition catalogue: “The whole lot that’s candy . . . can quickly be rotten.”1 There may be some humor within the exhibition—Smoking Canine (2024) is an amusing picture that actually depicts a canine puffing on a cigarette. Objects I, II, III, and IV (all 2024) draw inspiration from white underwear, a comb, a shoe, and a mannequin of a home—gadgets that, we be taught, the artist found in her Norwegian grandmother’s house, and thus evoke a way of nostalgia.
Upstairs, Stockings (2024) and Purse (2024) spotlight one other recurring theme in Orupabo’s artwork: the reclining feminine determine. Together with her distinctive collage type, the artist disrupts this conventional Western artwork historic topic, turning it into one thing fragmented and unsettling. The figures are composed of mismatched physique elements in numerous sizes. The compositions may be learn as a critique of a style that has traditionally strengthened problematic concepts about gender. But these works current a markedly relaxed—to not point out stylish and complex—vibe, because the figures look like having fun with moments of leisure. Intriguingly, they had been created in collaboration with a stylist for a trend and humanities journal. In the identical gallery, the video Over the Edge (2024) options discovered imagery, together with a girl’s face and invasive footage from medical examinations. The work displays Orupabo’s experiences as a Black lady navigating the Norwegian health-care system throughout childbirth, elevating difficult questions on what is taken into account acceptable remedy of ladies’s our bodies. What’s permissible? What can a affected person object to? The figures’ ambiguous expressions spotlight the strain between vulnerability and resistance in medical contexts.
In Two Ladies (2021), Orupabo depicts Black girls as paper-doll-like figures, held collectively by seen steel rivets. The figures have a patchwork high quality, combining as they do various pores and skin tones and mismatched physique proportions. On this evocation of fragmentation, I’m reminded of a comment by Anglo-Nigerian artist Mary Evans throughout a chat in London. Evans tried to provide voice to her expertise of shifting from Nigeria to the UK, describing herself as feeling like a “lower and paste”—neither totally one factor nor one other.2Equally, Orupabo, who shares Nigerian heritage alongside her Norwegian upbringing, appears to be channeling this sense of dislocation—this dilemma of biracial belonging, of identities seeping into each other, of the sliding variations between them, and between artist and viewers.
Orupabo’s constant use of nineteenth- and twentieth-century imagery she finds in numerous on-line archives from African nations is clear in items like Untitled Hangers (2024), a sculpture resembling a garments rack with metallic hangers, on which she has printed colonial-era pictures of Black girls’s faces, and Two Eyes and a Pole (2024), that includes a steel flagpole adorned with cloth printed with one other colonial picture.3 These works provoke vital questions on possession and the ethics of reusing such pictures. Orupabo seeks to reclaim the facility embedded within the pictures, subverting the dominance of the colonial gaze by way of appropriation. She engulfs and enwraps historic narratives, reasserting company over how sure pictures are seen and understood.
Within the closing gallery, the video set up Home Celebration (2024) options an iconic picture of childhood, the dollhouse, however makes use of it to look at darker features of domesticity. The footage, which is projected onto the dollhouse, captures a home get together in Eighties London with predominantly Black visitors, juxtaposed with scenes from a horror movie depicting a grotesque man assaulting a girl. The visceral revulsion the latter evokes mirrors the discomfort a prejudiced viewer would possibly expertise when confronted with Black pleasure. This stark distinction underscores the artist’s vital commentary on racism. By means of spatial installations and expansive imagery, Orupabo challenges viewers to reconcile the contradictions of intimacy and alienation and to confront urgent themes equivalent to colonialism, racism, and gender dynamics. Her works provoke a large spectrum of feelings—from sorrow to defiance—usually portraying fragmented human figures that assert their identities on their very own phrases.
at Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo
till April 27, 2025
Frida Orupabo (b. 1986, Sarpsborg, Norway) lives and works in Oslo. She is at the moment featured in a solo exhibition on the Sprengel Museum in Hannover. In 2023, she participated within the exhibition Flight at Malmö Konsthall alongside Kudzanai Chiurai and Eric Magassa. She has introduced solo exhibitions at Fotomuseum Winterthur (2022); Museu Afro Brasil, São Paulo (2021); Kunsthall Trondheim, Norway (2021); Huis Marseille, Amsterdam (2020); Portikus, Frankfurt am Important (2019); and Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo (2019). Orupabo participated within the fifteenth Gwangju Biennale (2024); the thirty fourth São Paulo Biennial (2021); and the 58th Venice Biennale (2018). Along with Ming Smith and Missylanyus, she introduced her work in Arthur Jafa’s exhibitions on the Moderna Museet in Stockholm (2019) and Serpentine Gallery, London (2017). Orupabo will probably be awarded the prize SPECTRUM – Internationaler Preis für Fotografie in 2025, and her work resides in lots of worldwide collections.
Akin Oladimeji is a critic, lecturer and author. He's at the moment within the first 12 months of a PhD at College School London (UCL) funded by the Arts and Humanities Analysis Council. His criticism and essays have appeared in e-flux, PAJ: A Journal of Efficiency and Artwork, Third Textual content On-line, and Burlington Up to date.
