Zohra Opoku

Zohra Opoku has generously produced The ba of my body is my ba. It is the two cobras. It is the image of eternity, the lord of years. It is the ruler of eternity., 2023, a limited edition artwork on the occasion of the exhibition, A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography at Tate Modern, 6 July 2023 – 14 January 2024.

Opoku’s limited edition for Tate is connected to her recent body of work, The Myths of Eternal Life. Created in the wake of her cancer diagnosis, the work seeks to be healing and transformative. Photographs of her body, taken before and after she underwent radiation therapy, are overlaid by photographs of trees taken in a wintry park in Berlin during the same period. Bare tree branches are a reoccurring image in her work, suggesting a period of retreat before regeneration. The work references the Egyptian Book of the Dead, an ancient text which provides instruction of preparation for the afterlife. The title is a quote from the translation of the Book of the Dead of the Goldworker of Amun, Sobekmose, in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum. Borrowing the language of the book, Opoku resists the confines of embodiment and mortality.

Each artwork comes with a certificate which is signed and numbered by the artist. Prices of the artwork are liable to change. As a limited edition sells out, prices of the artwork are subject to increase and the price will be clearly indicated.

• Artist Zohra Opoku
• Artwork The ba of my body is my ba. It is the two cobras. It is the image of eternity, the lord of years. It is the ruler of eternity
• Exhibition A World in Common
• Dimensions 70 x 70 cm
• Material Digital print on silk
• Edition Edition of 50, accompanied by signed and numbered certificate
• Date of work 2023

Zohra Opoku (b. 1976 Altdöbern, Germany) is a Ghanaian-German artist who works across multiple mediums, including sculpture, video, performance and photography, expressed through screen-printing and alternative photo processing on a variety of natural and secondhand fabrics. She is interested in stitching the past into the present by integrating family heirlooms and her own self-image into her visual observations of Ghana’s cultural memory. Her practice often centres around textiles and traditional Ghanaian dress codes, which have been an inherent part of the country’s identity and industry throughout West Africa’s complex history.

Selected solo exhibitions include Mariane Ibrahim Gallery, Paris, 2023; Mariane Ibrahim Gallery, Chicago, 2022; Prismes sector, Paris Photo, Mariane Ibrahim Gallery, Paris, France, 2019; Art Dubai, Mariane Ibrahim Gallery, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, 2018; Harmattan Tales, Mariane Ibrahim Gallery, Seattle, WA, 2018. Group exhibitions include Eclipse, Athens Biennale (7th edition), Athens, Greece 2020; The Last Museum, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany, 2021, and UN Women’s global exhibition, Malin Gallery, New York, NY, 2021. Her work is in the collections of the Cleveland Clinic Collection, Cleveland, Ohio; Faurschou Foundation, Royal Museum of Ontario, Canada; Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, Florida; CCS Bard College Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on -Hudson NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, and Tate, London. She lives and works in Accra, Ghana.