As part of my renewed research endeavour I resumed guest contributing to the excellent IAM – Intense Art Magazine.
The new post is about the German-Ghanaian artist Zohra Opoku whose multimedia works, that use new and recycled garments and textiles, interrogate belonging, nationalism, and hybridity. I’m glad I had a chance to write about her, as she is one of my favorite artists.
Here’s a short excerpt.
For a woman who identifies as “German, Afro-German, African, Ghanaian, Obroni, Asante”, heritage and tradition, autobiography and history, the “here” and “there” are like threads that need untangling. They are notions calling for the deep and complicated unpacking of paradoxes and layers of contradictions. The hyphen, which has come to mark generations of individuals belonging to what writer Taiye Selasi calls the “scattered tribe” of the “Afropolitans”, the cosmopolitan Africans, is Opoku’s home, the pause she forces on her public as she looks for her history in the nature and urban universes of Europe, Africa, and America.
Read the full article on IAM’s website.
Cover image: Zohra Opoku, Unraveled Threads, 2017
Afrosartorialism 