Zeitz MOCAA presents a one-day symposium and book launch focusing on the work and artistic practice of Ghanaian-German artist, Zohra Opoku, in the context of their career survey exhibition titled, We Proceed in the Footsteps of the Sunlight, on view at Zeitz MOCAA until 4 October 2026.
The purpose of this convening is to engage critically and affectively with Opoku’s work, and the multiple thematic concerns that shape her practice. Rooted in her local context of Ghana, Opoku’s work extends outward to her maternal ancestral ground in Germany, while also attuning itself to contemporary discourses shaping cultural and political life across the African continent and its global diaspora. This gathering will unfold through a series of panel discussions, moderated by members of the Zeitz MOCAA curatorial team alongside cultural practitioners who contributed to the development of the exhibition monograph and its contents.
The programme will include the launch of the exhibition monograph, a publication offering critical reflections on the work of Opoku. These include contributions by curator Dyhandra Lawson, Accra-based curator and cultural practitioner Assumpta Dickens, and writer Delali Ayivor. As well as a thought-provoking interview between curator Lauren Tate Baeza and the artist. The publication is further enriched by an essay from Dr Greer Valley, Senior Curator and Head of Curatorial Affairs at Zeitz MOCAA, alongside introductory texts by co-curators Beata America and Dr Phokeng Setai, which frame both the conceptual and material journey of the exhibition. Each of the monograph contributions engages one of the three elemental themes around which the exhibition is anchored: Ground as Belonging, Breath as Spirit, and Self as Shoreline. The publication is designed by Keenan Oliver.
event details
Date & Time
Saturday, 6 June 2026 | 2 pm – 7.30 pm
Venue
Zeitz MOCAA, Ocular Lounge, Level 6
MC
Beata America, Assistant Curator at Zeitz MOCAA
Entry
Access with standard museum admission of R265 per person.
Free to Zeitz MOCAA members on presentation of valid membership.
symposium programme
14:00 – 14:15
Guest Arrival
Refreshments served
14:15 – 14:30
Welcome and Opening Remarks
Dr Greer Valley (Senior Curator and Head of Curatorial Affairs)
14:30 – 15:00
Book Launch
Remarks by Buhle-Bethu Qatyana (Managing Editor)
15:00 – 15:45
Panel 1
Moderated by Buhle-Bethu Qatyana
15:45 – 16:15
Refreshment Break
16:15 – 17:00
Panel 2
Designer’s Cut:
Conversation between Co-curator of the exhibition Beata America and monograph designer Keenan Olivier,
on the design process and production of the We Proceed in the Footsteps of the Sunlight monograph.
17:00 – 17:45
Panel 3
Moderated by Dr Greer Valley
17:45 – 18:30
Cocktails and Canapés
18:30 – 19:30
Zohra Opoku in conversation with Thebe Magugu
Moderated by Dr Phokeng Setai
meet the participants
Zohra Opoku
Photo: Jesse Jewelz, courtesy of Zeitz MOCAA.
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).
Dhyandra Lawson
Dhyandra Lawson is the Andy Song Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), where she develops exhibitions and stewards the museum’s contemporary collection of over 3,000 works. Her research examines art production in postcolonial societies with an emphasis on African and African Diasporic artists. Her recent exhibition Imagining Black Diasporas: 21st-Century Art and Poetics examined nearly a quarter century of practice by sixty Black artists working across Africa, Europe, and the Americas. The exhibition explored Black diasporic aesthetics and underscored the need for expanded scholarship on Black artists’ work. In another recent exhibition at LACMA, she presented the work of thirty-five Indigenous and Latine artists based in the Americas and the Pacific, whose work explores the earth not only as physical terrain but as a conceptual framework for memory, home, and sovereignty.
Lawson’s exhibitions and publications investigate identity, media, materiality, and aesthetics through a transnational lens. Before joining contemporary art at LACMA, Lawson was a photography curator specialising in Black visual culture and representation.
Lawson holds a Master of Arts in Art History from Arizona State University through the LACMA-ASU Master’s Fellowship and a Bachelor’s degree in Visual Art and Art History from Occidental College. She is a Visiting Professor at Occidental College and the California Institute of the Arts.
Delali Ayivor
Delali Ayivor is a Ghanaian-American writer whose work engages archival practice, identity, and diasporic subjectivities within a global context. Her writing examines memory, selfhood, and positioning through a postcolonial lens, with a particular interest in the entanglements of contemporary life.
She has made editorial and critical contributions to platforms focused on contemporary African art, with specific reflections on visualising memory. Her writing and research explore notions of the self in relation to her identity and global positioning.
She has contributed editorial and critical writing to platforms focused on contemporary African art. Her recent publications include She is This, produced in collaboration with artist Audrey Gair; Afrofuturist Triptych for My Mother in The Rumpus; and Implies, Presupposes, Begets with Coven Berlin. Across her work, she reflects on Ghanaian heritage, womanhood, as well as the construction of identity.
Ayivor is a 2011 United States Presidential Scholar in the Arts, and a Tin House Summer (2020 and 2021) and Winter Workshop Scholar (2019). She exhibited a collaborative single-channel video work at the Dak’Art Biennale in 2022 and has held residencies at Black Rock Senegal (2021) and STONELEAF Retreat (2019). She has moderated discussions at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and delivered a keynote address at Americans for the Arts’ 2014 Annual Convention. She holds a Master of Science in Library and Information Sciences from Pratt Institute and a Bachelor of Arts in Cultural Anthropology from Reed College.
Assumpta Dickens
Assumpta Dickens is a Ghanaian-Nigerian multidisciplinary creative entrepreneur working at the intersection of art, digital innovation, and institutional development. Her practice is grounded in building platforms of knowledge, visibility, and support for women across Africa working in and across creative disciplines.
As a cultural strategist, producer, and independent curator, Dickens develops projects that foreground women’s agency within the creative economy. Her work moves between curatorial research, programme development, and community-building initiatives that foster representation, collaboration, and long-term sustainability. She approaches this work through both feminist and diasporic perspectives, centring dialogue and continuity among women creatives on the continent and beyond.
She is the founder and curator of Omoge & Co. Institute, an interdisciplinary platform dedicated to advancing women-led cultural production across Africa. Within this framework, Omoge & Co. Projects operates as a curatorial thought lab, facilitating critical exchange across multidisciplinary art sectors. Her Palette w/ Assumpta Dickens creates space for intimate conversations with women working in contemporary art across the continent, highlighting the diversity of their practices while engaging broader questions of creativity, culture, and identity.
Dickens’ curatorial practice is rooted in storytelling as a tool for transformation. Her cross-cultural exhibitions and programmes explore the intersections of art, gender, and institutional collaboration, fostering environments that promote inclusivity, visibility, and professional longevity for women creatives. Across her undertakings, she remains committed to the transformative power of collective support, knowledge exchange, and cultural production.
Lauren Tate Baeza
Lauren Tate Baeza is a scholar of African art and political history currently serving as the Fred and Rita Richman Curator of African Art at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. In this role, she leads the stewardship, research, and exhibition of the museum’s African art collection. Her curatorial practice engages the cultural, political, and social histories embedded within material forms, foregrounding how objects articulate systems of belief, power, and exchange across time.
Her research interests include materiality, cultural geography, and African political history, with a focus on how spatial and historical shifts shape artistic production. Across her exhibitions and collaborations, she examines the relationship between heritage and contemporary practice, often situating African art within broader conversations around migration, sovereignty, and transnational belonging. Recent projects include Austere Imaginary (2022) with kó Art Space and the end is near, the end is the beginning (2024) for Atlanta Art Week. As an extension of Austere Imaginary, she also curated RE/MIX at Académie des Beaux-Arts as part of the 2022 Congo Biennale. Among many other projects, Ancient Nubia: Art of the 25th Dynasty at the High Museum in 2023, expanded the audience’s view on African art through a powerful curation reviewing its temporal and geographical vastness.
Previously, Baeza served as Director of Exhibitions at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, where she oversaw multidisciplinary programming at the intersection of art and social justice. She has also worked with nongovernmental organisations and policy institutes focused on initiatives in Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, and Malawi. A contributing editor at Art Papers, she serves on the boards of Still Art in Johannesburg and the UCLA African Studies Center. She is also the founder and principal of diplomatic artist exchange program, LagosAtlanta Artist Residency. Baeza has been featured on NPR and PBS, as well as in Associated Press News, Smithsonian Magazine, and Forbes. She holds a Master of Arts in African Studies from UCLA and a Bachelor of Arts in Africana Studies and Cultural Studies from California State University, Northridge, and has studied curatorial practice at Sotheby’s Institute of Art.
Dr Phokeng Setai
Dr Phokeng Setai is a curator and writer whose work engages contemporary art through both scholarly research and exhibition-making. With a sharp eye for emerging modes of cultural production, his practice considers how curatorial strategies shape knowledge production, pedagogy, and public engagement within African contexts.
In early 2024, he completed a PhD in Anthropology at the University of the Western Cape, based at the Centre for Humanities Research. His doctoral research examined contemporary African curatorial strategies and pedagogies, focusing on the relationship between exhibition-making and critical inquiry.
Prior to joining Zeitz MOCAA, Dr Setai served as Curator at Norval Foundation in Cape Town. There he curated Witness of My Time (2023–2024), a solo exhibition by Malian artist Famakan Magassa. He has participated in international curatorial programmes including RAW Material Company (Dakar), Independent Curators International (New York), Fundación Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (Madrid), and G.A.S. Lagos, experiences that inform his transnational outlook.
Dr Setai is co-founder of Exhibition Match, an initiative that draws on the culture of football to create new audiences for contemporary art through socially engaged formats. The project reflects his interest in interdisciplinary approaches and alternative modes of participation—a product of his belief that creativity thrives where disciplines collide.
In 2024, he joined Zeitz MOCAA as Assistant Curator, contributing to exhibitions, research, and public programming. His writing has appeared in The Thinker, The Sole Adventurer, ArtThrob and most recently, Africa Is a Country. His research interests include curatorial practice; contemporary art in relation to urbanism and architecture; experimental music and sound ecologies; design; and the cultural infrastructures that sustain artistic production on the Continent.
Dr Greer Valley
Dr Greer Valley is a scholar, curator, and writer whose work bridges museums and universities to advance inclusive knowledge production and public dissemination of arts discourse and practice. Her work focuses on decolonial pedagogy, museum ethics, and curatorial practice, presented nationally and internationally. Her ongoing research interrogates the representation of African colonial histories in institutional and exhibitionary contexts, with a focus on how museums can enact forms of repair.
As Zeitz MOCAA Senior Curator & Head of Curatorial Affairs, Dr Valley leads exhibitions, research, and public programmes focused on the art of Africa and its diasporas. She also serves as Deputy Chairperson of the Africa South Arts Initiative (ASAI) and sits on the board of the District Six Museum.
Her writing has appeared across international platforms and publications, including Africa Is a Country, Mail & Guardian, and in Routledge’s Companion to African Diaspora Art History. Dr Valley’s recognitions include the University of the Witwatersrand Chancellor’s Female Academic Leadership Fellowship (2024), the Getty Foundation’s MAHASSA Fellowship (2019–2020), and the University of Cape Town ICA Curatorial Fellowship (2018). In 2022, she curated Unsettled as a guest curator at the Dak’Art Biennale in Dakar, Senegal.
She holds a PhD in Art Historical Studies, a Master’s in Visual Art, an Honours degree in Visual Studies, and a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture.
Beata America
Beata America is a curator working across archives, sound, materiality, and process. She is currently Assistant Curator at Zeitz MOCAA. She holds a BA in Humanities from Stellenbosch University and an Honours degree in Curatorship from the Centre for Curating the Archive at the University of Cape Town’s Michaelis School of Fine Art, and has a background in classical music.
At Zeitz MOCAA, America has contributed to and conducted research for numerous exhibitions, and written for a range of the museum’s publications. These include Only Sun in the Sky Knows How I Feel–(A Lucid Dream) (2021), Soft Vxnxs (2022), Shooting Down Babylon (2022), Indigo Waves & Other Stories: Re-Navigating the Afrasian Sea and Notions of Diaspora (2022), and the Zeitz MOCAA Atelier (Koyo kouoh Atelier) residency by Igshaan Adams, Not Working (Working Title) (2022). She has also worked on major exhibitions such as When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting (2022), Past Disquiet (2023), and Seismography of Struggle: Towards a Global History of Critical and Cultural Journals (2023), as well as Seekers, Seers, Soothsayers (2023), which she co-curated with Tandazani Dhlakama. In 2024, she curated The Other Side of Now and One Must Be Seated, and in September 2025 co-curated We Proceed in the Footsteps of the Sunlight with Dr Phokeng Setai.
America’s practice extends to writing and public discourse. She contributed to the publication The Shrine by Armando Mariño, and has participated in talks and panel discussions including at the 2026 Investec Cape Town Art Fair, ‘Africa Is a Country’: The Role of Institutions in Shaping African Solidarities, hosted by Art School Africa, and the Lusaka Contemporary Art Centre (LuCAC) roundtable Legacy and Possible Futures in Zambia. She also served on the selection panel for Art School Africa’s 2025 Summer Exhibition.
In 2020, America co-founded Processus, an art-wine collective that explores wine as an ephemeral art object. Working with minority grape varieties in South Africa, the project engages questions of process, temporality, and material transformation across artistic and agricultural practices. Processus is produced in collaboration with winemaker and viticulturist Megan van der Merwe and is exported internationally, including to the United States. She recently curated the Cabinet/Record section for the 2026 Investec Cape Town Art Fair.
Zeitz MOCAA’s exhibition and curatorial programming is generously supported by the Mellon Foundation and BMW South Africa.
