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<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\tOn view through October 4, the exhibition is anchored by three recurring subjects: water, to signal the fluidity of practice and sanctification of daily rituals; breath, both in the context of life and death; and ground as a stabilizing force of nature, a site of comfort, rootedness, identity, and familial belonging.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI felt like it\u2019s perfect, moving to Ghana [from Germany] and then just becoming focused on art,\u201d said Opoku. The relocation helped in \u201cbeing connected emotionally, spiritually with the heritage of my dad. [Relocating] also helped a lot with research, travel and [having] one-on-one conversations to actually understand what my father left for me. I think what you see at Zeitz is pretty much also representing very well how I grew up as an artist in Ghana, especially.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tOften, Opoku centers the experiences of women. Her work QueenMothers <\/em>(2016) is an examination of the influential roles that matriarchs play in southern Ghanaian communities and society. To explore the Akan concept of Sassa<\/em>, referring to an invisible but ever-present and occasionally vengeful spirit brought about by the unresolved issues of a deceased person, Opoku spoke to several queen mothers from across the region. She went on to memorialize these queen mothers, taking photographs that show them doing a traditional Ashanti dance known as Adowa, as a way to \u201ccapture their spirit, their lively nature [and] their beautiful dresses,\u201d said Opoku.<\/p>\n \n\tIn addition, the artist looked to libraries at the University of Ghana in Accra and an academic at the African studies department of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi. \u201cYou really wonder where all this information ends up when we don\u2019t write it down,\u201d she said. \u201cFor me, it was really important to learn about it and to speak about it.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tOpoku was born in 1976 to a Ghanaian father, who was a traditional leader and a German mother in the former East Germany town of Altd\u00f6bern, and was raised by her mother and her maternal grandparents. Opoku first visited Ghana in 2003, relocating some eight years later to the country, where she always felt at home when she visited to connect in all aspects with her heritage, as she has previously put it. There, she began to focus more fully on her art practice.<\/p>\n \n\tInspired by her cultural heritage, Opoku explores identity, belonging, and memory through textiles, photography, screenprints, installations, and sculptures. But of all the mediums she has utilized, she spoke most about textiles, which she said had \u201cfascinated\u201d her from a very young age. As a kid, she observed how her grandmother handled sheets and tablecloths \u201cdiligently,\u201d she shared. She noticed how textiles blew on a clothesline in the family\u2019s garden. As the wind dried these textiles, Opoku thought they became sculpture. Then they became delicate all over again when ironed. Opoku\u2019s family members also practiced embroidery, crocheting, and knitting, but she was interested in sewing. \u201cI think from the very beginning, I handled textile like it was second nature,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \n\tTrained in fashion design and photography in the German city of Hamburg, Opoku often screenprints photographs onto pre-dyed natural fabric, then embroiders onto her materials and even adds collaged imagery. Her gallerist Mariane Ibrahim called her a \u201cwoven storyteller who is conceptually involved with the idea of creating stories and patches of stories in a sort of a continuum,\u201d adding that the artist\u2019s work is \u201cextremely personal.\u201d Ibrahim, whose award-winning 2017 Armory Show booth featured work by Opoku, praised the artist as a \u201cshapeshifter.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe Zeitz MOCAA show highlights how Opoku also moves freely between small- and large-scale ways of working. \u201cThe scale in which Zohra works is huge. [The] dynamism in her practice. It evolves constantly,\u201d said America, the Zeitz MOCAA curator. \u201cIt\u2019s one of the things we\u2019re actually focusing on in this exhibition as a survey, is to look at this 10-year period, how her practice has evolved, shapeshifted, and [has] gotten to different levels.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tOpoku praised the curators for an \u201cincredible job,\u201d adding \u201cmy personal recommendation for everyone who goes into the exhibition is to really make time to read the work description. It changes the entire experience of walking through. It\u2019s beautifully written.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/artists\/zohra-opoku-zeitz-mocaa-survey-interview-1234787781\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Zohra-Opoku_Jesse-Jewelz-courtesy-of-Zeitz-MOCAA.jpg?w=1024″] In 2023, Beata America, a curator for the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, made a research trip to Ghana. Accompanied by her colleague Julia Kabat, America ended up visiting the Accra studio of Zohra Opoku, a Ghanaian German artist whom Zeitz MOCAA director Koyo Kouoh \u201chad always spoken really highly of,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1963140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1963140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1963140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1963140\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1963140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1963140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1963140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Zetiz-MOCCA-02_10_2025_LR-2.jpg?w=400\")
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