View publication

Zohra Opoku
Sassa
When Zohra Opoku and I began work on her exhibition, she suggested
the concept sassa as both a theme and title with which to work. She had
first come across the concept in Ladislas Segy’s book Masks of Black Africa,
where it is described as the soul, or as universal energy that is invisible,
but always present, as well as immanent in all things — humans, animals,
plants, minerals; creating a sense of oneness and exchange. It is also
described as feared, but appeasable through offerings and sacrifices.
On researching the term sassa, I found no mention of it anywhere
except in this first book, of questionable title, by the Hungarian art
historian Segy. I modified the spelling of the term and found the concept
of sasa in the work of writers, such as J.B. Danquah, Anthony EphirimDonkor and R.S. Rattray, which seemed to dovetail only with the latter
meaning of the concept, as a somewhat malevolent, but appeasable spirit.
Like many books that encompassed in one, all of ‘African
philosophy’, Segy seemed to have conflated variant concepts of the soul,
comparing the Ashanti sassa to the Dogon’s nyama and the Fang’s evur,
not taking into account as others seemed to, that in Ashanti or rather Akan
philosophy, many different concepts of the soul coexist. Even in my
subsequent research in books by Ghanaian authors, (such as Danquah,
Busia, Antubam, Sarpong, Appiah-Kubi and Gyekye) and early foreign
anthropologists, (like Rattray, Meyerowitz, Field, de Marees and Lysted),
the meanings for each term of the ‘soul’ varied from author to author. What
became clear was that there was no one concept that described its entirety
either in humans, plants or minerals. What I drew from the readings was
that each person was a composite made of the mogya, the blood of the
mother; of the ntoro, the seed of the father, which expressed itself as spirit
or sunsum; as well as of the life force, the okra, which came from god or
nyame; that the saman was the spirit after death, dwelling in the land of
ancestors, asaman; and that sasa was the restless, often vengeful, spirit of
one whose death was somehow unnatural.
Even though the concept did not cohere with what we thought was
its original sense, we decided to stay with the title. It now denoted more
than the immanence present in Zohra’s work, the depiction in her
photographs and sculptures, not so much of the outer form of the person,
but of their essence, merging with the natural and material elements
around them. It also pointed to the inscrutability of certain ways and
concepts of being, for those of us brought up in the Diaspora or in cities far
away from where these concepts still might hold some relevance.
Inherent in Akan culture, there seems to be a certain guardedness
of knowledge, especially of anything deemed sacred, a guardedness that in
the past has led outsiders to mistake silence for absence, and to misread or
misconstrue terms and concepts. There also seems to be a more deliberate
ambiguity of meaning, knowledge that is simultaneously definite, but not
fixed, so that when Zohra and I went on a research trip to the Ashanti
region, we again found different people giving different variations on the
term, expressing not so much an objectivity of knowledge, but many
different subjectivities, whose ‘truth’ lay in their very relativity.
The Ashanti region is where Zohra’s father, whom she met as a
young adult shortly before he died, was from. Like many family members
who die suddenly amongst the Akan, his death left behind questions and
suspicion. The belief that the agency for one’s failings, for death, or even
success lies in the hands of something external to one, to God or the
ancestors in the case of good, and to witchcraft or the devil in the case of
evil, is held across all belief systems in the country. Fear of others’ curses,
3
or prayers for the wealth of blessings, are both so prevalent and consistent,
that sasa as a concept, both in its malevolent manifestation, and as one
interviewee attested, in its benign, blessing-bearing form, does much to
explain a deeply spread reluctance — evident culturally in churches, on
radio, in popular films — to take full accountability for the consequences
of one’s own deeds.
When Zohra first came to Ghana to meet her father, she was
presented to him in his role as Kyedomhene of Asato, an Ashanti town
situated in the Volta region. The Kyedomehene’s role, as told to me by royal
expert Nana Twum Barima II was that of the ruler that stayed behind when
the others went to war and guarded the home. The system of rule amongst
the Akan, which is often translated erroneously as chieftaincy, a term that
flattens all its complexities, is still structured largely around its military
origins, and holds within it much of the cultural play of history and of the
essence of the past. Everything I know of my cultural history, every passion,
was awakened by my proximity to these cultural realities, in all their depths
and layers. Zohra’s father passed away before he could impart much of his
knowledge or understanding to her, and so it was that when we went to the
Ashanti region, it was the Ahemaa, the Queen Mothers, she was interested
in meeting and portraying. Even though the Ohene, the male ruler, serves
as the ruler of the traditional system of power, each of the clans of the Akan
trace their origins to an ancestress. Power is traced through the female line,
so that the Ohene’s position is inherited matrilineally and nominated by
the Ohemaa, who sits by his side. Capturing the Ahemaa in silhouette, as
they danced the Adowa or in poses of graceful supplication, Zohra
harnessed the sun’s power to print the images through large negatives
using Cyanotype and Van Dyke Brown processes, creating images in
indigo, the colour of Nyame, god of the sky; and in brown, the colour of
Abrewa, the first ancestress of the earth; encompassing the dualities of
being and of power expressed so eloquently in the person of the Ohemaa.
The images were printed onto thick white bedsheets, given to Zohra
by her grandmother, and so linked the notion of motherhood from East
Germany, the provenance of her mother’s family, to that of her father’s in
Ghana. These links are expanded on in the series of bodymasks, that echo
and expand on the aesthetics of the classical sculptures and masks of the
Akan, in which the forms portray the essence of the person, rather than
trying to mimic their bodily form. In the mask titled, My Mother, a
renovated insect hotel she found in her mother’s garden, its many snug,
but still porous compartments, evoke a place of rest and of nurture, that
place many of our mothers represent to us, a place to return to after our
travels, a place within which to find ourselves again before we move on.
Growing up, home for Zohra was East Germany, where the one
constant, the place of refuge in a world she traversed as alien, was her
grandparents house, and the mask to which she gave the title My Father,
made up of seemingly incongruous pieces of wood, assembled in collage,
balancing on a bench turned on it side, precarious, yet still stable, is
dedicated to her grandfather. In the Akan concept of sunsum — the spirit
passed down to one’s father — a sense of alienation sets in, an inability to
thrive, if the child is separated from their father, from his protection, from
the strength of his spirit. In his absence, a father figure, often connected to
the mother steps in, to pass on the child, something of their nature through
sunsum, in this case, the skill and creativity of her grandfather.
Another father figure is represented in X-ray Mask. Set on fragile
legs, its metal layers mimicking the machine from which it derives its title,
5
the wooden blocks on its foremost layer, like so many parts of the body,
loosened, floating, unanchored; a cubist study of a face drawn from
memory. Zohra created the mask after her stepfather died after a period
of illness, putting into material form that which was beyond language,
drawing on the mask’s power to serve as medium to Asaman, to those that
have left the earthly sphere.
Within Akan philosophy, the sunsum of the father gave one a sense
of being protected, and the mogya of the mother provided a connection to
the larger lineage, a sense of home. Rituals, such as the burial of the
placenta in the place of birth, rooted you and gave you a sense of belonging,
without which you might feel rootless, prone to wandering. For those of us
born with a more diffuse sense of what home was, this feeling of
homelessness, or rather the constant search for home, was what defined
us. In Batakari Mask, Zohra uses a chair, whose form is found across many
parts of West Africa, to represent a place of home, and of stability. When
I researched the design of the chair she used as inspiration, I found its
original use was as a birthing chair, which seemed poignant in that the
recourse to creation, or creativity, seems, again and again, an attempt to
give birth to oneself, and to one’s own particular place in the world.
The design that hangs from the top of the chair, with its rhythmic
and musical qualities, is inspired by the linear design of the batakari, a
smock from Northern Ghana worn mainly by men. Similar to the Agbagba
Mask, that draws on the agbada worn by Yoruba men of Nigeria and Benin,
she repurposes clothes meant to be worn by men for women; part
protective armour, sturdy; part children's swing, playful. The exploration
in her work of the tailoring of spaces reserved for men to our own bodies
and selves, was one of the things that, in this Ghanaian artistic landscape
— ridden by obstacles, and dominated by the narrative and presence of
men — made me want to reach out to her, collaborate, grow side by side.
Her self-portraits — printed on fabrics that reference her past in
the world of fashion; creme canvas, brown satin, rose cotton, military
denim — seem also to speak of the strength of inhabiting fully one’s
femininity, reflecting the sensuality of nature; glimpses of lips, of hair,
of eyes, revealing only what one wants to reveal when and as one wants
to, standing strong in one’s own power.
In an installation, we hear the music of mestres of capoeira; it was
through journeys to Brazil and the discovery of this martial art form,
developed as a strategy of resistance by slaves captured from the many
different parts of Africa, that Zohra reconnected her with Ghanaian roots.
We see a projection refracted through the Batakari and Agbagba Masks,
that represent both home and self. Standing separate, but still connected,
the other members of the bodymask family. The image on the screen, again
an image of herself, almost invisible now, blending completely into the
frame of nature, her corporeality disappearing into its depths. The search
for definition through her different elements; her mother, mogya, her
father, sunsum, the quest for home, evaporating into a greater whole. She
has created her own versions of reality through time and place and through
the elements around her, invented her own rituals and traditions, and in
this defined for herself her own version of what sassa is and can be.
Nana Oforiatta Ayim
Curator of Sassa & Creative Director, Gallery 1957
6
7
Nana Bonsu Nyarko, Atwima Bodwesango — Sepaase, 2016
Van Dyke Brown Print on textile
208 x 142cm
8
Nana Afia Serwaa Bonsu I, Appiadu Hemaah, 2016
Cyanotype on bedsheet
186 x 124cm
10
Nana Yaa Adutwumwaa II, Brongahafo Kenyasi No.1, 2016
Cyanotype on bedsheet
194 x 143cm
12
Nana Afia Abrefi, Bomsu Kumasi, 2016
Cyanotype on bedsheet
208 x 126cm
14
My Mother, 2015
Found object
32 x 28 x 6 inches
16
My Father, 2015
Found wood, cord, net, nails
58 x 69 x 19 inches
18
X-Ray Mask, 2014
Teak wood, copper, magnetic paint, acrylic, cord, nails
18 x 71 x 31 inches
20
Batakari Chair, 2014
Teak, Abachi wood, cord, nail
120 x 40 x 100cm
22
Agbagba Mask, 2014
Teak, Abachi wood, cord, rubber
63 x 65 x 42 inches
24
Selfportrait, 2016
Screen-print on textile
1498 x 100cm
26
Pyracantha, 2016
Screen-print on hand washed paper
79 x 105cm
28
Ficus Carica, 2015
Screen-print on textile
79 x 105cm
30
Rhododendron, 2016
Screen-print on textile
79 x 105cm
32
Cyperus Papyrus, 2015
Screen-print on textile
79 x 105cm
34
Dicksonia Antarctica, 2015
Screen-print on textile
79 x 105cm
36
Wisteria, 2015
Screen-print on textile
79 x 105cm
38
Life Oak Tree, 2015
Screen-print on textile
79 x 105cm
40
Artist Biography
Selected Exhibitions
2016
Making Africa, Centre de Cultura
Contemporània de Barcelona(CCCB)
Draping Histories, Solo Show, Kruger
Gallery Chicago
Sassa, Solo Show, Gallery 1957, Accra
Africa Reframed, Øksnehallen,
Copenhagen
Art Festival, Iwalewa Haus, Bayreuth
2015
He Doesn’t Have Anything On, Commune.1,
Capetown
Material Effects, Eli&Edythe Broad Art
Museum, East Lansing, Michigan
Remember to Come Back, Mariane Ibrahim,
Seattle
Future Africa: Visions in Time, Iwalewahaus
Bayreuth(DE)
Making Africa, Guggenheim Bilbao
Designing Futures, LagosPhoto Festival,
Lagos
We Don’t Contemporary, (Curatorial
project), Kampnagel Hamburg
Magical Riso Jan van Eyck Institute,
Maastricht
...Do Delay, Public show by Pick Nick, Nicosia
Masked/ Unmasked, Dak’Art 11th Biennial,
St.Louis
Paroles de Femmes, Alliance Francaise, Accra
2013
Healing the Environment and the Creative
Arts Symposium, Institute for African Studies
2016 Sacatar Artist residency, Salvador da
Bahia, Brazil (BR)
2015
Kala Institute, Fellowship Award,
Berkeley (CA)
Research Residency, Iwalewa Haus,
Bayreuth (DE)
Artist Residency, Bagfactory,
Johannesburg (ZA)
Virtual Material, Musée de
l´Ethnographie, Bourdeaux
Post No Bill, Solo Show, Jamestown
Community Theatre Centre, Accra
Art show funding, Goethe Institute +
Alliance Francaise(GH), IFA (DE)
Virtual Material, Iwalewa Haus, Bayreuth
2013
Moving Africa(ZA), Visiting grant
for Salon Urbain de Douala (CM)
Attitude., Costumes & Visuals for Interactive
Performance Installation Infecting the City
Festival, Cape Town
2012
Berlin Textures, OKK/Raum 29, Berlin
Sommerhängung, Gallery Peter Herrmann,
Berlin
Attitude., Costumes & Visuals for Interactive
Performance Installation by Sebastian
Klemm, Kunst im Club, Stuttgart
Fellowship Show, Kala Institute,
Berkeley(CA)
Handwash Only, Gallery Peter Herrmann,
Berlin
WOW PRINT, WOW, Amsterdam
2009–2012
Prèt-à-Partager Touring Exhibition: Addis
Ababa, Ethiopia 2012; ifa Gallery Berlin
& Stuttgart, Germany 2012; Nubuke
Foundation Accra, Ghana 2011; City Hall
Capetown, Southafrica 2011; CCA, AAF &
YabaTech Lagos, Nigeria 2010; Fortaleza
Maputo, Mozambiqe 2010; Le Mànege,
Dakar, Senegal 2009 Studio Show, Jan van Eyck Institute,
Maastricht(NL)
Grants and Fellowships
2014
Artist Residency, Jan van Eyck
Institute, Maastrich (NL)
Take it to the Streets, Alliance Francaise,
Accra
Making Africa, Vitra Design Museum, Weil
am Rhein
42
2014
The Billboard Project, Solo show in Public
Space, Accra
Art Show funding Accra, Alliance
Francaise+Goethe Institute (GH)
2012
Artist Residency, Art OMI, Ghent, NY
2008–2012
Prèt-à-Partager, Aktion Afrika,
German Cultural Fund
Couture Commune, Artist Residency,
Künstlerhaus Stuttgart (DE)
This catalogue accompanies Zohra Opoku’s exhibition
Sassa at Gallery 1957, curated by Nana Oforiatta Ayim,
9 June — 10 August 2016
© Gallery 1957
Kempinski Hotel Gold Coast City
PMB 66 — Ministries
Gamel Abdul Nasser Avenue
Ridge — Accra
Ghana
All images © Zohra Opoku
Designed by Hyperkit, London
All or part of this publication may not be reproduced, stored
in retrieval systems or transmitted in any form or by any
means, whether electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying recording or otherwise, without the prior
permission in writing of the publisher.
www.gallery1957.com