Zohra Opoku
‘I have arisen from my egg which is in the lands of the secrets. I give my mouth to myself (so that) I may speak with it in the presence of the gods of the Duat. My hand shall not be turned away from the council of the great god Osiris, Lord of Rosetau, this one who is at the top of the dais. I have come (so that) I may do what my heart desires in the Island of Fire, extinguihing the fire which hcomes forth.', 2020
Information
Zohra Opoku
*1976, Altdöbern, Germany
Lives and works in Accra, Ghana
© Zohra Opoku, courtesy of Mariane Ibrahim
Audioguide
Six hands appear in this work from Zohra Opoku’s series The Myths of Eternal Life, Chapter 1: Healing Hands, which she embarked on in 2020 shortly after being diagnosed with cancer. The hands represent all the people who treated her during this difficult time. In this and other works from the same series we see bodily fragments stitched together with images of leafless trees, which Opoku photographed in Berlin’s Tiergarten Park during her treatment. These bare trees gave her hope that she too would recover with time.
Opoku’s love for textiles began at an early age, making dolls clothes as a child and then her own outfits as a teenager. She studied fashion in Hamburg before deciding to pursue a career as an artist, but her interest in fabric remains. Working with photography and screen printing, Opoku literally stitches the pieces together to compile narratives that merge present and past into images from which she draws clarity and strength: "I think it is important that we reflect on and deal with our past, no matter how unpleasant or painful it may be. Confronting our past gives us a clean slate on which to set out our vision and feelings for the future."
The title of the works in this series are drawn from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, a volume of ancient wisdom on which Opoku meditated during her illness: "I have arisen from my egg which is in the lands of the secrets. I give my mouth to myself (so that) I may speak with it in the presence of the gods of the Duat. My hand shall not be turned away from the council of the great god Osiris, Lord of Rosetau, this one who is at the top of the dais. I have come (so that) I may do what my heart desires in the Island of Fire, extinguishing the fire which comes forth."
Further artworks from this exhibition
Intro
Sammy Baloji
Untitled, 2018
Lubaina Himid
Dreaming Has a Share in History, 2016
Dineo Seshee Bopape
Lerole: footnotes (The struggle of memory against forgetting), 2017