ACQUISITION OF ARTWORK BY THE CENTRE POMPIDOU, PARIS
ACQUISITION OF ARTWORK BY THE CENTRE POMPIDOU
CENTRE POMPIDOU
April 4, 2024
Paris, France
The Musée national d’art moderne – Centre Pompidou, in Paris, through the support of the “Friends of the Pompidou” (les amis du centre Pompidou), has acquired the work by Zohra Opoku, entitled, ‘I am the one who shines, the one who is above the district of the sky. I go forth to the sky. I climb upon the sun’s rays. O, I am weary, I am weary, (yet) I proceed.' [Extract from Chapter 74 : Spell for going forth from the earth/ An Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead/ The Papyrus of Sobekmose]," (2023) for the museums permanent collection.
The work is part of the Chapter IV: The Book Of The Dead in her recent series titled The Myths of Eternal Life Part I continues to ponder this inquiry, as she brings together two years of works that she created in the wake of her cancer diagnosis to stitch together a story of devastation and rejuvenation.
Her turn to death and dying is informed by facing her own mortality, as well as the Book of the Dead, an ancient Egyptian mortuary text, which includes spells to prepare one for the afterlife. Opoku uses chapters from the book as titles for her works and also incorporates Egyptian hieroglyphs, which appear most prominently in Chapter IV.
The series is grounded in mortality not as a devastating end, but as a life cycle that has its particular beauties. “This is my favorite work to date. A lot of friends say this is my strongest work because [they say] ‘You really take your insides out. You’re not afraid to show how scared you were’ … It really gave me a new confidence that everything is going to be fine.”
The work is now on view at the museum.