Gallery 1957 presents a solo exhibition from the artist Zohra Opoku. 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.”
EXHIBITION
Sassa
Zohra Opoku
Curated by Nana Oforiatta Ayim/ ANO
From May 25th to August 1st, 2016
Gallery 1957
Kempinski Hotel Gold Coast City, PMB 66 — Ministries,
Gamel Abdul Nasser Avenue, Ridge
Accra, Ghana
http://www.gallery1957.com
