"From race to representation, gender, sexuality, identity and class, nothing is off-limits across the Nicola Frimpong's watercolours and digital works as she undermines normative constructions of sane and insane, normal and abnormal, self and other to suggest alternative psychological and physical landscapes."

 - Celeste-Marie Bernier, Stick to the Skin: African American and Black British Art, 1965-2015, University of California Press (2019) 

Drawing inspiration from a diverse array of sources, including her own autobiography, popular culture, the internet, and art history, Frimpong weaves a surreal painterly universe that dismantles racial and gender hierarchies, achieved through an exploration of the deepest corners of the human psyche. 

The artist's influences range from famous artists Otto Dix and Henry Darger to philosopher Marquis de Sade, and this is evident in her untethered approach to portraying a range of graphic sexual and violent scenarios in her works, as a mirror to society. 

Working from her home studio in Epsom, Frimpong has consistently favoured watercolours as her medium of choice. Occasionally, she introduces vivid strokes of paint to emphasise individual characters within her compositions. The integration of text and personal annotations is equally vital to her artistic practice, offering glimpses into the artist's own subconscious, where - much like in a diary - all remains uncensored. 

About the artist 

Nicola FRIMPONG (b. 1987, Epsom, UK), also known as Freakpong, explores personal  intersections of disability, queerness, and desire. Using watercolour pen and digital media the artist tackles intimate themes of sex, gender race and violence.

Notably, Frimpong had a recent solo exhibition at Cell Projects Space, London in 2022. In 2014, the artist was interviewed as part of the film survey ‘African Diaspora Artists in the 21st Century', directed by curator and academic Paul Goodwin, a collaboration between King’s College London’s Department of International Development and the Institute of International Visual Arts (Iniva). She was selected for ‘Bloomberg New Contemporaries’ Institute of Contemporary Art, London and Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool in 2012-2013, after graduating in 2009 from MFA Wimbledon School of Art and included in ‘No Soul For Sale’ in The Museum of Everything, Tate Modern, London 2010.

Selected works can be found in the Henry Boxer collection and the artist is featured in ‘Stick to the Skin: African American and Black British Art’, 1965-2015  by writer, Celeste-Marie Bernier, published by University of California Press in 2019 and included in ‘Paper’, exhibition and catalogue for Saatchi Gallery, London in 2012, writer Ben Street.