SILK SCARF DESIGN FOR TATE LIMITED EDITIONS

TATE LIMITED EDITIONS

TATE MODERN    

July 6, 2023 - January 14 2024

London, UK

Zohra Opoku has generously produced ‘The ba of my body is my ba. It is the two cobras. It is the image of eternity, the lord of years. It is the ruler of eternity.’, 2023, a limited edition artwork on the occasion of the exhibition: ‘A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography’ at Tate Modern, 6 July 2023 – 14 January 2024.

Opoku’s limited edition for Tate is connected to her recent body of work, The Myths of Eternal Life. Created in the wake of her cancer diagnosis, the work seeks to be healing and transformative. Photographs of her body, taken before and after she underwent radiation therapy, are overlaid by photographs of trees taken in a wintry park in Berlin during the same period. Bare tree branches are a reoccurring image in her work, suggesting a period of retreat before regeneration. The work references the Egyptian Book of the Dead, an ancient text which provides instruction of preparation for the afterlife.

The title is a quote from the translation of the Book of the Dead of the Goldworker of Amun, Sobekmose, in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum. Borrowing the language of the book, Opoku resists the confines of embodiment and mortality.