With every fiber of (my) being

Through her multidisciplinary practice, Zohra Opoku addresses the complex issues of belonging and return for Afro-diasporic identities, herself descended from multiple trajectories of displacement. Like a jigsaw puzzle, she recomposes her personal history, interweaving pieces of traditional fabric with family archives collected and engraved or silk-screened on canvas.

The poetically layered "Unraveled Threads" series is a metaphor for the in-between nostalgia to which people with multiple heritages are doomed in their nesting process. Between blurred images and memories reconstructed to fill in the fragments of missing history, Zohra attempts to untangle the bonds of lineage that lead her to the places that are part of her heritage, and to unwind the residual effects of trauma and displacement. She invokes the ancestors, weaving a dialogue between past and present to regenerate her roots.

Her personal experience raises more universal questions regarding feelings of acceptance and otherness, the phenomenon of cognitive identification and the resulting societal responsibilities. Never quite from here, never quite from elsewhere, she creates neutral, intimate spaces where everyone can find themselves, like shelters from which to apprehend our attachment and ties to a world that is often all too hostile. They remind us of the importance of reweaving threads to transcend the limits of the self, and nurture the hope that there will always be a place for everyone.

Born in 1976 in Altdöbern, in the former East Germany, Zohra Opoku lives and works in Accra, Ghana.

This exhibition would not have been possible without the contribution of Mariane Ibrahim (Chicago, Paris, Mexico City)

Image: Zohra Opoku, Brigitte Gerda Marlies Thiede & Dr. George Bob Kwabena Opoku (Marlies & Bob), Screenprint on cotton, thread, wool (210 x 149 cm), Courtesy of the artist and Mariane Ibrahim (Chicago, Paris, Mexico City), 2017