The official-artistic career of Frida Orupabo developed out of the digital world of algorithms: she was working as a social worker for sex workers and victims forced into prostitution when Arthur Jafa came across her Instagram account @nemiepeba three years ago. It is certainly not a convenient aesthetic that operates Orupabo’s feed and that ultimately led her to the Venice Biennale in 2019, but rather a relentless confrontation with omnipresent historical and simultaneously contemporary sociological problems: gender, racism, post-colonialism, violence, identity. Since 2013 the Norwegian-Nigerian artist has collected almost archivally authentic visual evidence distributed in popular media, amongst them photographic and film records of colonial violence and images of women.*
A show of recent work by Orupabo is on view in Vienna through the end of this week.
Through January 9.
Koenig2 by robbygreif
Margaretenstrasse 5, Vienna.
Frida Orupabo, Koenig2 by robbygreif, October 22, 2020–January 9, 2021, from top: Untitled, 2019, fine art print on Hahnemühle PhotoRag baryta paper; Untitled, 2019 (detail), video installation, looped; Untitled, 2018, framed pigment print on acid-free semigloss cotton paper; Untitled, 2018, collage with paper pins mounted on cardboard; Untitled, 2019, video installation, looped. Images © Frida Orupabo, courtesy of the artist and Koenig2 by robbygreif.
