Zohra Opoku Is Shapeshifting Her Way into Africa’s Biggest Museums

In 2023, Beata America, director of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art in Africa, went to Ghana for an inspection. Accompanied by colleague Julia Kabat, America eventually visited the Accra studio of the Ghanaian-German artist Zohra Opoku, of whom Zeitz MOCAA director Koyo Kouoh, America recalls, “always spoke highly of.” art news. Despite having never met Opoku before, America “immediately fell in love with her studio practice,” the curator recalled.

America and other members of the Zeitz MOCAA team “really tried to find a way for us to be more involved in Zohra’s work,” she said. “So when I was looking at the exhibition schedule and anticipated exhibitions, it was easy for me to think of her name for a solo show.”

That exhibition eventually became Opoku’s first museum survey, opening at Zeitz MOCAA in September. Curated by America and Phokeng Setai, the exhibition is titled “We Follow the Sun’s Footsteps” after a passage in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Ancient funerary texts that guide the soul beyond the physical world.

“It is a great honor to be in this position,” Opoku said via video call from Accra about attending the opening of the exhibition. The show “almost feels surreal. It feels like you’re watching your life from the outside.” Opoku describes herself as being moved by the opportunity, especially because she was given the chance to situate it in a space that embodies the legacy of Kouoh, who died last year before she could see the Venice Biennale come to fruition. Kouoh’s “footprint is huge,” Opoku said.

The exhibition, which runs until October 4, features three recurring themes: water, symbolizing the fluidity of practices and the sanctification of daily rituals;

“Moving to Ghana feels perfect [from Germany] “Then it just started to focus on art,” Opoku said. The move helped “connect emotionally, spiritually to my dad’s legacy.” [Relocating] Also provided a lot of help in research, travel, etc. [having] One-on-one conversations to truly understand what my father left me. I think what you see in Zeitz pretty much represents my experience growing up as an artist in Ghana as well. ”

Opoku often centers on women’s experiences. her works Queen Mother (2016) examined the influential role played by matriarchs in communities and society in southern Ghana. Explore the concept of Akan SasaOpoku spoke of an unseen but ever-present, occasionally vengeful spirit brought about by the unresolved issues of the dead, and she spoke with several queen mothers from the region. She continued to commemorate the queen mothers by photographing them dancing the traditional Ashanti dance “Adowa” to “capture their spirit, their lively nature”. [and] Their beautiful clothes,” Opoku said.

Additionally, the artist consulted the library of the University of Ghana in Accra and an academic from the Department of African Studies at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi. “You really wonder where all this information would end up if we didn’t write it down,” she said. “It’s really important to me to understand it and talk about it.”

Opoku was born in 1976 to a Ghanaian father and a German mother. He lived in the former East German town of Altdobern and was raised by his mother and maternal grandparents. Opoku first visited Ghana in 2003 and moved to the country about eight years later, and as she has said before, she always feels at home when she visits Ghana because she connects with her heritage in every aspect. There she began to focus more on her artistic practice.

Inspired by cultural heritage, Opoku explores identity, belonging and memory through textiles, photography, screen printing, installation and sculpture. But of all the mediums she has worked with, the one she talks about most is textiles, which she says have “fascinated” her from an early age. She shared that as a child, she observed how her grandmother worked “hard-working” on sheets and tablecloths. She noticed textiles blowing up in the wind on a clothesline in her garden. As the wind dries the textiles, Opoku believes they become sculptures. Then after ironing, they become fragile again. Opoku’s family also practiced embroidery, crochet and knitting, but she was interested in sewing. “I think from the beginning, textiles were second nature to me,” she says.

Opoku, who trained in fashion design and photography in Hamburg, Germany, often screen-prints photographs onto pre-dyed natural fabrics that are then embroidered onto her materials or even add collaged images. Her gallery owner Mariane Ibrahim calls her a “woven storyteller who conceptually works to create stories and story fragments in a continuum”, adding that the artist’s work is “very personal”. Ibrahim, who showcased Opoku’s work in his winning booth at the 2017 Armory Show, praised the artist as a “shapeshifter.”

The Zeitz MOCAA exhibition highlights how Opoku can freely switch between small and large-scale ways of working. “The scale of Zohra’s work is huge. [The] Her practice is dynamic. It continues to evolve,” said Zeitz MOCAA curator America. “As a survey, one of the things we really focused on in this exhibition was looking at how her practice evolved, transformed and developed over this 10-year period. [has] reached a different level. “

Opoku praised the curators’ work as “incredible,” adding “I would personally recommend that everyone visiting the exhibition take the time to read the descriptions of the works. It changes the whole experience of visiting. It’s so beautifully written.”