Woman with snake

Description

Exploring questions of race, gender, culture, class, and their complex intersections, Frida Orupabo fuses together varied sources of archival materials to question colonial and modern representations of Black womanhood. Positioned on the façade of a Victorian-era building, monumental images by the Oslo-based, Nigerian Norwegian artist portray Black women’s bodies as sites of knowledge and empowerment.

Positioned on this Victorian-era building, Woman with snake (2021) is the second work in a two-part project by Orupabo that subverts the suppression of power and opens a dialogue with its surroundings. Disrupting common conceptions of whose bodies belong where and why, Orupabo's collages reveal layers of history, much like the site itself, but they are built on her own terms. The tension and restraint evoked in Woman with snake suggest a cool reclamation of power. Standing calmly before a massive serpent, with one fist raised in a symbol of resistance and the other hand casually hooked into her pants pocket, the woman in this image asserts a commanding sense of control, her agency symbolically and literally amplified by her sheer scale. Offering new readings that both acknowledge and destabilize historically destructive forces against women, Orupabo powerfully portrays Black women's bodies as sites of empowerment and self-determination. Curated by Bonnie Rubenstein.

Presented by Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival.