Zohra Opoku: Sassa

Titled ‘Sassa’, the exhibition explores the role of textile culture in the materialisation of concepts beyond the individual’s corporeal reality.

Based in Accra, and of German and Ghanaian descent, Opoku’s versatile work expands across installation, performance and lens-based media. Opoku’s examination of textile culture considers fashion’s political, psychological and socio-cultural role in relation to both African history, and individualistic or societal identities. In Sassa, the artist draws on her month long stay in the Ashanti region of Ghana – part of a recent residency with the cultural research platform ANO – as well as her past portrait series, in order to explore cultural philosophies, trajectories, and aesthetics across the country. As Nana Oforiatta Ayim, founder of ANO and Creative Director of Gallery 1957, explains: “Through the exploration of the Ashanti concept of sassa – described by art historian Ladislas Segy as ‘the soul that can also lie outside of the body and that flows through all things’ – Opoku’s work is in constant interplay with this notion of the unseen and the immanent.”

FicusCarica, courtesy by the artist

Zohra Opoku has a background in both fashion and photography, receiving an MA in Fashion from the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences in 2003. Her exhibition at Gallery 1957 follows a solo show at the Kruger Gallery in Chicago. Opoku has also exhibited in group shows at The Victoria & Albert Museum, London (2007); Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, Barcelona (2016); Alliance Française, Accra (2016); Commune 1., Cape Town (2015); Iwalewa Haus, Bayreuth (2015); Guggenheim, Bilboa (2015); Kala Gallery, Berkeley (2015); Lagos Photo Festival, Lagos (2015); Mariane Ibrahim Gallery, Seattle (2015); Dak’Art, Senegal (2014) and the Jan Van Eyck Institute, Maastrich (2014). Founded in Accra by collector Marwan Zakhem, Gallery 1957 is a new gallery with a curatorial focus on contemporary Ghanaian art presenting a programme of exhibitions, installations and performances by the country’s most significant artists.

Curated by Nana Oforiatta Ayim/ANO

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