Central to Zohra Opoku’s practice is her use of textiles to explore themes of identity, memory, and migration. Her textile-based installations and sculptures offer a richly layered visual experience that highlights the complex cultural connections between Africa and Europe, as well as the personal and collective experiences of displacement and hybridity.
For the artist, textiles mean more to her. The Ghanaian-German contemporary artist uses textiles as a way to infuse characters in the personal stories she tells and make cultural and political statements. As someone who had trained as a fashion designer, Opoku’s memories of her family, her father in particular, are tied to textiles. As a curator of memory, Opoku’s works carry deep meanings of biographical, emotional and political weight. In her works, she investigates the politics of personal identity formation in the context of historical, cultural, and socioeconomic factors in modern Ghana.
Traditional Ghanaian dress codes, such as handcrafted kente cloth and adinkra textiles, are markers of shared belongings for Opoku. They are also used in her practice to establish her own sense of self and identity. She also buys secondhand clothes and veils from local markets to stay connected to her home country. Her family heirlooms are incorporated into her visual observations of Ghana’s cultural memory.
Image courtesy of Mariane Ibrahim Gallery
On Opoku’s use of textiles to explore identity and heritage in AnOther Magazine, Holly Black writes:
“The significance of textiles permeates Opoku’s practice. Her prints are produced on second-hand cloth that gives a rougher, organic texture than what she refers to as “stiff and inflexible” paper, and the appearance of Kente cloth – both as a raw material and depicted in her portraits – directly references images of her late father and other symbolic nods to her Ghanaian ancestry.”
In addition to using textiles in her work as a means of expression and storytelling, Opoku highlights her dedication to ethical manufacturing and sustainability through the process of gathering and repurposing textiles. She gets her materials from local markets and second-hand shops, selecting items with a special meaning to her or that are representative of her culture. She then transforms the textiles using a number of techniques, like collage, printing, and dyeing. The fashion and design styles of Europe are also reflected in her works. She addresses the complex cultural and historical ties between Africa and Europe in this way.
Zohra Opoku‘s work is heavily influenced by her multicultural upbringing in Accra, Ghana, and Hamburg, Germany. Opoku has experimented with photography, printmaking, and video, in addition to textiles. Her work has been shown in major museums and galleries all over the world, including the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago; the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia; the Nubuke Foundation, Centre for Contemporary Art; !Kauru Contemporary Art from Africa; Kunsthaus Hamburg; Guggenheim Museum Bilbao; Kunsthal Rotterdam; Broad Art Museum; and Southbank Centre Hayward Gallery.
Renowned institutions that own her work include the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Cleveland Clinic Collection, the Faurschou Foundation, the Royal Museum of Ontario, the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, the CCS Bard College Hessel Museum of Art, and most recently, the Tate Modern.
