Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) presents We Proceed in the Footsteps of the Sunlight, the first museum survey exhibition of Ghanaian-German artist Zohra Opoku. Tracing a decade of quiet revolutions in cloth, memory, and self, the exhibition brings together textured expressions of personal history and cultural inheritance, revealing an artistic journey in constant motion. Curated by Beata America and Dr Phokeng Setai, the exhibition opens on Thursday, 11 September 2025 on Level 3 Elevator Side of the museum and runs until 4 October 2026.
Born in 1976 in Altdöbern (former GDR/East Germany), Opoku later relocated to Accra, Ghana, to reconnect with her ancestral roots. She now lives and works in Accra, represented by Mariane Ibrahim (Chicago, Paris, Mexico City). Her multidisciplinary practice, deeply rooted in personal history and cultural heritage, explores the layered intersections of identity and memory, bridging cultures, geographies, and time.
For Opoku, this dialogue becomes a form of visual storytelling—an evolving, textured archive of identity that is both intimate and quietly powerful. Trained in fashion design and photography in Germany, Opoku extends her command of textiles into a layered visual language, moving fluidly between photography, printmaking, and textile-based installation. Fabric emerges as a generative medium through which questions of identity, memory, and ancestral lineage are thoughtfully explored. These themes unfold across the breadth of her practice, as she turns to printmaking, photography, and sculpture as complementary mediums for reflecting on selfhood and lived experience.
This survey maps the artist’s trajectory over the past decade through several major bodies of work, anchored by three recurring elements: Water — signalling the fluidity of practice and sanctification of daily rituals, as seen in After the prayer / before the prayer (2018); Breath — the life force that feeds the spirit, suspended between life and death, explored in The Myths of Eternal Life (2020–2024); Ground — the stabilising force of nature, a site of comfort, rootedness, identity, and familial belonging, depicted in Queen Mothers (2016), Unraveled Threads (2017) and Give Me Back My Black Dolls (2024–ongoing).
The title, We Proceed in the Footsteps of the Sunlight, is drawn from the Book of the Dead—also known as Coming Forth by Day—an ancient Egyptian funerary text guiding the soul beyond the physical world. In Opoku’s interpretation, it becomes a quiet declaration: a record of passage through turbulence and a signpost to the path ahead. The full extract reads: I proceed in the footsteps of the sunlight. I am one who knows the path of secrets (and) the Gate of the Field of Reeds. I exist therein. See me, I am come. I have overthrown my enemies upon the earth. My corpse, it is buried.
We Proceed in the Footsteps of the Sunlight forms part of Zeitz MOCAA’s ongoing series of in-depth, research-driven solo exhibitions that centre and contextualise the practices of significant artists from Africa and its diaspora, while engaging with pivotal themes in Pan-African history. Extending beyond the continent’s borders, this programme embraces enduring and emerging entanglements, positioning Africa within a global context, and the world within Africa’s.
As a groundbreaking institution dedicated to preserving and promoting contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora, this exhibition reflects the museum’s vision to produce and present cutting-edge contemporary exhibitions, deepen art historical knowledge, amplify the careers of Africa’s most talented artists, strengthen education programmes, and ensure access for all.
Zeitz MOCAA’s exhibition and curatorial programming is generously supported by the Mellon Foundation and BMW South Africa.
meet the artist
Zohra Opoku
Zohra Opoku’s multidisciplinary practice is grounded in her personal history and cultural heritage. Born and raised in East Germany and later relocating to Ghana to reconnect with her ancestral roots, Opoku explores the complex intersections of identity and memory. Her work navigates the space between these experiences, bridging cultures, geographies, and time.
Opoku’s practice often begins with photography and evolves through a tactile process of deconstruction and reconstruction. Photographic images are screen-printed onto pre-dyed natural fabrics and subsequently transformed through hand stitched embroidery and collage. These techniques, rooted in both traditional craftsmanship and experimental composition, form the foundation of her richly layered textile works, installations, and sculptures.
Personal identity and its complex nuances are central concerns in her work. Drawing from her own life and body, Opoku reflects on themes of belonging, memory, and representation. She often integrates family heirlooms, personal symbols, and elements from Ghana’s visual culture, including references to West African brass-making traditions. The result is a body of work that is both cathartic and resonant, anchored in lived experience yet capable of addressing broader questions shared across the African diaspora and beyond.
The work of Zohra Opoku has been exhibited internationally, including in the 15th edition of Sharjah Biennale (United Arab Emirates, 2023), the 14th edition of the Dak’Art Biennale (Senegal, 2022) and at 7th Athens Biennale (Greece, 2021).
Institutionally, her work has been presented at the Louvre Abu Dhabi (UAE, 2024–2025), the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Minneapolis, 2025), the Brooklyn Museum (New York, 2024), the Cleveland Museum of Art (Cleveland, 2018), RAW Material Company (Dakar, 2024), the High Museum of Art (Atlanta, 2024), Palais Populaire (Berlin, 2024), Wereldmuseum (Rotterdam, 2024), Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg (Wolfsburg, 2022), SAVVY Contemporary (Berlin, 2022), Tate Modern (London, 2022), Southbank Centre / Hayward Gallery (London, 2020), Kunsthaus Hamburg (Hamburg, 2020), the Archeological Museum of Mykonos (2019), the National Museum (Nairobi, 2017), Guggenheim Museum (Bilbao, 2015), Musée d’Ethnographie (Bordeaux, 2013), CCA Lagos (2010), and Kunsthaus Hamburg (2010), among many others.
Her work is held in renowned public and private collections, including the Centre Pompidou (Paris), CCS Bard College Hessel Museum of Art (Annandale-on-Hudson), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles), Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art (Gainesville), Faurschou Foundation (Copenhagen), Royal Museum of Ontario (Toronto), Tate Modern (London), Onassis Collection (Athens), Eskenazi Museum of Art, (Bloomington), Cleveland Clinic Art Collection (Cleveland), and Dean Collection (New York).
Zohra Opoku was born in 1976 in Altdöbern (former GDR/East Germany). She lives and works in Accra, Ghana, and is represented by Mariane Ibrahim (Chicago, Paris, Mexico City).
Image credit: Zohra Opoku. Photo by Jesse Jewelz, courtesy of Zeitz MOCAA.