The Collection

Frida Orupabo is a Norwegian-Nigerian sociologist and artist whose digital and physical collages interrogate race, gender, sexuality, violence, colonialism, and identity. Composed of archival photographs, personal images, film stills, and media sources, her works fragment and reassemble Black female bodies, exposing how they have been historically objectified and misrepresented. Held together by pushpins on gallery walls, her collages hover between vulnerability and defiance, simultaneously unsettling and empowering the figures they portray.

Orupabo studied development and sociology at the University of Oslo, where she was deeply influenced by bell hooks’s writings on race and feminism. Before turning to art, she worked in social services counseling sex workers, experiences that continue to inform her focus on the social and economic conditions of Black women. She began experimenting with scanned family photos and Microsoft Paint, sharing early works on Instagram under the handle @Nemiepeba. In 2017, filmmaker Arthur Jafa invited her to participate in A Series of Utterly Improbable, Yet Extraordinary Renditions at the Serpentine Galleries, London—her international debut.

Her work has since been exhibited widely, including at the Venice Biennale (2019), São Paulo Biennial (2021), Gwangju Biennale (2024), Okayama Art Summit (2022), Fotomuseum Winterthur, Moderna Museet, Museu Afro Brasil, Portikus (Frankfurt), Astrup Fearnley Museet (Oslo), and Bonniers Konsthall (Stockholm). Orupabo has also presented solo exhibitions at Kunsthall Trondheim, Galerie Nordenhake, and Modern Art, London.

She is the recipient of the SPECTRUM – Internationaler Preis für Fotografie (2025) and an Honorary Fellowship from the Royal Photographic Society (2023), and has been shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize and the Joan Miró Prize (2023).

Her work is represented in major international collections, including Tate, Guggenheim Museum, Pérez Art Museum Miami, Studio Museum in Harlem, LACMA, Museum Ludwig, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Moderna Museet, Victoria and Albert Museum, and Astrup Fearnley Museet, among many others.