Flash Art uses cookies strictly necessary for the proper functioning of the website, for its legitimate interest to enhance your online experience and to enable or facilitate communication by electronic means. To learn more about cookies please see Terms & conditions

Flash Art
Flash Art
Shop
  • Home
  • CURRENT ISSUE
  • Features
    • Archive
    • Conversations
    • FOCUS ON
    • On View
    • PARADIGME
    • Reviews
    • Report
    • Studio Scene
    • The Curist
    • Unpack / Reveal / Unleash
  • STUDIOS
    • Dune
    • Flash Art Mono
    • Archive
      • DIGITAL EDITION
      • Shop
      • Subscription
      • INSTITUTIONAL SUBSCRIPTION
      • Contact
→
Flash Art

330 April-May 2020, Reviews

21 April 2020, 1:00 pm CET

Frida Orupabo “12 self portraits” Gavin Brown’s enterprise, Sant’Andrea de Scaphis / Rome by Allison Grimaldi Donahue

by Allison Grimaldi Donahue April 21, 2020
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Frida Orupabo, “12 self portraits”. Exhibition view at Gavin Brown’s enterprise, Sant’Andrea de Scaphis, Rome, 2020. Photography by Roberto Apa. Courtesy of Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York / Roma.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Frida Orupabo, “12 self portraits”. Exhibition view at Gavin Brown’s enterprise, Sant’Andrea de Scaphis, Rome, 2020. Photography by Roberto Apa. Courtesy of Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York / Roma.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Frida Orupabo, Untitled, 2020. Site-specific installation: 13 collages with paper and pins, curtain. Variable dimensions. Installation view at Gavin Brown’s enterprise, Sant’Andrea de Scaphis, Rome, 2020. Courtesy of Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York / Rome.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Frida Orupabo, Untitled, 2020. Site-specific installation: 13 collages with paper and pins, curtain. Variable dimensions. Installation view at Gavin Brown’s enterprise, Sant’Andrea de Scaphis, Rome, 2020. Courtesy of Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York / Rome.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Frida Orupabo, Untitled, 2020. Site-specific installation: 13 collages with paper and pins, curtain. Variable dimensions. Installation view at Gavin Brown’s enterprise, Sant’Andrea de Scaphis, Rome, 2020. Courtesy of Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York / Rome.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Frida Orupabo, Untitled, 2020. Site-specific installation: 13 collages with paper and pins, curtain. Variable dimensions. Installation view at Gavin Brown’s enterprise, Sant’Andrea de Scaphis, Rome, 2020. Courtesy of Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York / Rome.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Frida Orupabo, Untitled, 2020. UV print on aluminum with steel pins. 16 7/8 x 9 5/8 x 12 in. Ed. di 3 + 1 AP. Courtesy of Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York / Rome.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Frida Orupabo, Untitled 2020. Black jesmonite with steel pole. 9.45 x 48.82 x 5.12 inches. Courtesy of Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York / Rome.

Frida Orupabo’s imagery is both archival and personal — blurring the line between the two, if such a division exists. At Gavin Brown in Rome, however, the artist’s collaged elements make up a living, human-size diorama in which to question image, structure, race, and subjecthood.

A light-gray curtain covers most of the wall space of the gallery, revealing bare stone walls above and framing high windows and an empty altar. The space, a former church that otherwise feels medieval, mysterious, and raw, is softened by these perfectly symmetrical folds of fabric that ripple across its walls. There is a sense of warmth, like a drawing room filled with puzzling, disturbing, beautiful images and objects. Three screen-printed aluminum sculptures are positioned atop white block pedestals in the center of the space; they are busts that stare back at the viewer, regulating the space. On the altar itself is a barbell with a resin head at each end. This is the face of the artist herself, but one face among many in this installation of selves that have lived, could have lived, are to be lived. On the east wall are the remaining eight self-portraits: aluminum figures covered with layers of photo paper, pinned with what look like metal thumb tacks, at once implying motion and the inability to move independently, like marionettes or a child’s paper doll. One image is a baby, another a singular head looking down upon the rest of the works. A number of the pieces are flying: downward via the force of a weighted rock; or skyward upon fluttering, feathery white wings. Beside these winged creatures is a lounging woman dressed in what appears to be many layers of an elegant kaftan or robe. In this pose she recalls Manet’s painting of Jean Duval: Baudelaire’s Mistress, Reclining (1962).

Using archival images as self-portraiture, Orupabo activates Édouard Glissant’s claim that “in relation every subject is an object and every object a subject.” Images once used to objectify are reclaimed in subjecthood, in the creation of self; it is a self in progress, in motion, in dialogue with us all.

Share this article
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Mail
More stories by

Allison Grimaldi Donahue

Invulnerable Vulnerabilities: Life and Art in the Time of the Virus

20 April 2020, 1:00 pm CET

Nathaniel Mellors: We should talk about some of your work and the exhibition you’re working on for the museum. Tala…

Read More

Jana Euler: Contextual Painting in Times of Global Groundlessness

27 April 2020, 1:00 pm CET

As much as an apt consideration about painting today would have been a welcome opening, there is an elephant in…

Read More

Emily Mae Smith: A Broom of One’s Own

18 May 2020, 1:00 pm CET

Fresh, febrile, shot through with humor and glamour, the paintings of Emily Mae Smith are reliquaries of art history and…

Read More

Maison Margiela Artisanal Apparel – Photography by Rudi Williams

22 May 2020, 12:00 pm CET

NewCostume is a column by Matthew Linde exploring contemporary fashion practice. Episode I: a visual essay by photographer Rudi Williams…

Read More

  • Next

    Nick Mauss “Bizarre Silks, Private Imaginings and Narrative Facts, etc.” Kunsthalle Basel

  • Previous

    Invulnerable Vulnerabilities: Life and Art in the Time of the Virus

© 2025 Flash Art

  • Terms & conditions
  • Contact
  • Work with Us