Zohra Opoku


Zohra Opoku is a German-born Ghanaian textile artist and photographer. She used textile patterns to inform her photographed portraits. She was born in Altdöbern, Germany, and she lives in Accra. She is known for her installations, performances, textile designs, photographs and videos.
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Biography

Born in 1976 in Altdöbern in East Germany, her father of Ghanaian origin died when she was a child. She was raised in part by her maternal grandparents. She then knew little about her African origins, her mother hesitant to give free rein to stories on this subject, being the subject of surveillance in East Germany following her relationship with a Ghanaian man and the paranoia in this regime about non-standard elements. However, she and her family benefited from the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Zohra Opoku was then able to pursue higher education in Hamburg, in the field of fashion and design. Then, still in Europe, she worked in clothing with the Danish designer Henrick Vibskov, before devoting herself entirely to her own artistic creations. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London presented some of his works in an exhibition entitled Black Style in. But his training and this prior career in the fashion and clothing industry will mark his later creations.
In 2011, she returned to Ghana, her father's country, and settled in Accra. In 2014, several installations in different places in Accra including the Alliance Française, as part of a project called Who is wearing my T-Shirt -The Billboard Project, were noticed. She wanted to highlight the incongruous effects of the importation of second-hand Western clothing into Africa. The idea for these installations was born from a vision a few years earlier in a village in Ghana of a young man wearing a T-shirt glorifying FC Hansa Rostock, an infamous football club from the former GDR. in Germany for the racist insults made at the time by his supporters. For her, the clothes worn demonstrate the links that each person wishes to establish with their own culture.
Then, from 2017, it was a Chicago gallery run by Mariane Ibrahim which allowed her to be present in other international artistic events. One of the first joint exhibitions, the installation Unraveled Threads, at one of the best-known New York contemporary art fairs, The Armory Show, was awarded an award. Mariane Ibrahim then presents works by Zohra Opoku in various exhibitions or festivals, such as EXPO Chicago, or even Paris Photo, in addition to the Dakar Bienna. The installation also corresponds to a search for identity and a family story, with deliberately blurred portraits of his father and other members of his family screen-printed on kente fabrics: “It has this blurred effect of images and memories, to show how we are connected to our own imagination and memories. “It’s a collage of information and stories – from my father, but also from my brothers and sisters,” she explains. Some of his works are also included in the inaugural exhibition, of a new gallery by Mariane Ibrahim in Paris, in 2021, entitled ''J'ai deux Amours..''

Artistic practice and themes

Opoku’s work examines personal and collective identity, memory, and cultural belonging, drawing on her experiences between Europe and West Africa. Her practice is grounded in photography and textiles, and often begins with photographic images that are screen-printed onto dyed natural fabrics, which she then transforms through embroidery, collage, and installation techniques.
Textile materials, including fabrics sourced from local markets and family heirlooms, play a central role in her work and function as carriers of personal and cultural histories. Opoku’s imagery frequently incorporates her own body, family photographs, and symbols from Ghana’s visual culture, exploring how garments and patterns record and reflect questions of belonging, memory, and representation.
Her use of textiles reflects broader historical and socio-economic influences on identity, such as the meanings embedded in traditional Ghanaian dress codes and fabric culture. This approach appears across her installations, photography, and mixed-media works, positioning cloth as both material and conceptual medium for investigating how histories and personal narratives are woven together.

Selected exhibitions

Personal

Collective