Zohra Opoku’s practice has long bridged the worlds of fashion, memory, and fine art, and her current exhibition at Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town, South Africa has now drawn the attention of Harper’s Bazaar Netherlands. Known for her poetic approach to textiles, Opoku transforms fabric into a vessel of history and identity, weaving together narratives that are at once deeply personal and universally resonant.
"For the German-Ghanaian artist Zohra Opoku, fabric is never just fabric. She works with the typically Ghanaian textile kente, as well as denim and vintage fabrics, to represent layers of culture, memory, and identity. Drawing from her Ghanaian roots, she builds images as collages.
In the collections of various fashion houses we see that same layering: at Vivienne Westwood and Louis Vuitton, different materials merge into silhouettes that feel just as rich and meaningful as Opoku’s work. This fall, the artist will have her first museum survey: We Proceed in the Footsteps of the Sunlight. This exhibition invites visitors not only to see textiles but also to read them: as poetry in fabric, where past, present, and future are intertwined."
Excerpted words edited by Simone Sniekers for Harper's Bazaar The Netherlands.
