In the Art of Tonia Nneji and Zohra Opoku, Poignant Narratives of Healing

Opoku has a tradition of using old family textiles in her work, and thereby weaving past histories into her current life. In Chapter 1, I Am Made Strong, she represents different parts of her body abstractly dismembered from the whole; screen-printed images of her head, torso, and arms sit in the left-hand corner of the linen cloth. Images of bare winter tree limbs are colored in red and purple and pink, as though caught in various stages of a winter sunset, and superimposed as skin on her body, and where her face should be. An outstretched hand bears an image of her real face, balanced on the tips of her fingers as if for a better view of the approaching, unknown future. A series of closed and open hands, and separate cutout images of her lips, nose, eye, and ear float in the air against more barren tree limbs, their spindly branches colored yellow and set on a dark background like a wallpaper of X-rayed human veins. For Opoku, trees symbolize life, and also the reality that as our human bodies die, they are making a slow return to the earth from which they came. Adding color to these images gratified her hunger for vibrance during treatment in wintry Berlin, and recalled the colorful life in Ghana that she suddenly had to abandon.

Creating I Am Made Strong was a way for Opoku to reflect on what was happening to her body. “I needed something to get away from my worries and to reflect on my journey in a different way. I wanted to transform it from this terrifying moment into a moment of peace,” she explains. An encounter with an exhibition on ancient Egypt at the New Museum in Berlin proved deeply influential. Taken by the ancient Egyptian belief in the afterlife, Opoku began to study the Book of the Dead, a compilation of Egyptian texts to help the deceased navigate the afterlife and reach a paradise symbolic of their lives on earth. “I was so moved by how the Egyptians reconciled with death, that I started thinking about my own possible death differently,” Opoku says. “If I was meant to leave this life soon, I wanted to create my own chapters reflecting on mortality, and preparing for whatever lay beyond.”

Zohra Opoku, I have power over my heart. I have power over my mouth. I have power over my legs. I have power over my limbs.  I again have power over my invocation offerings. I have power over air. I have power over water. I have power over  the flood. I have power over the river. I have power over the riverbanks. I have power over males who act against me. I have power over females who act against me in necropolis. I have power over those ordered to act (against me) on earth, 2020. Series: The Myths of Eternal Life, Chapter II. Screenprint on linen, thread. 100 x 61 3/4 in. 254 x 157 cm.

Photo: Copyright the Artist. Courtesy of Mariane Ibrahim 

Still undergoing treatment, Opoku shared that being touched and examined by so many different sets of hands “felt like my body’s parts were being separated from the whole, like I was being dismembered. And yet it was all part of this journey towards healing. I had to find a way to access and focus on another part of my identity that could feel whole, since my body couldn’t.” Turning the experience into material for her work helped Opoku create a sense of distance from her actual human body, and use it to reflect on the fullness of her human spirit. “In the ancient texts I was researching, hands were always used to pass on something or explain something vital to the journey towards the afterlife. I was trying to find parallels in my own work, to transform the meaning of all these real, physical hands poking and prodding me, fragmenting my body, into something more symbolically healing, and perhaps even preparing me for my own potential afterlife.”

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