Frida Orupabo’s practice centres around reclaiming Black historical and cultural narratives, investigating the suppressive power of the gaze, as well as its potential to challenge and reshape social and political power dynamics. Working with photographic as well as moving imagery, her practice incorporates in a wide range of formats spanning from sculpture to video. Orupabo has been collaborating with BORCH Editions since 2024. Her first project, three large-scale photogravures based on digital collages, explored the tactile qualities of intaglio printmaking. In her photogravures Cover I & II, she deploys blind embossing to further investigate the sculptural potential of this classic printing technique.

Orupabo’s work is rich in recurring pictorial elements, among them references to playing cards. Picnic contains the image of a colonial card game portraying a Black person, a reference to lynchings in the United States during which white spectators would consume food and drinks on picnic blankets as a recreational pastime. Clover I & II are based on stills from the blaxploitation film Abby, framed by a three-leave clover reminiscent of the shape of the card-suit Clubs. In Orupabo’s hands, seemingly innocuous shapes turn into visual indicators of the way in which playful pastime activities were intertwined with anti-Black racism.