• Her Palette Invites Zohra Opoku

• (Featuring Ethel Tawe’s brilliantly curated tracklist)

In this episode of Her Palette, I sit down with a dear friend and globally acclaimed artist, Zohra Opoku, to delve into her latest body of work, Give Me Back My Black Dolls - A captivating doll installation, currently on view at Kunsthal Mechelen in Belgium until March 2, 2025, features 100 dolls dyed with Nigerian shoe ink and dressed in Ghanaian tie-dye attire. The dipping process is inspired by a moral tale from the book Der Struwwelpeter, which Zohra found to be an empowering influence during her childhood.

Zohra reflects on her childhood as a Black girl growing up in East Germany, unpacking themes of identity, colour politics, and representation. She shares personal stories of repainting caucasian dolls to look like herself and revisits empowering yet complex childhood narratives that shaped her understanding of race and belonging. Inspired by Léon Damas, a foundational poet of the Négritude movement, her new body of work titled “Give Me Back My Black Dolls” delves into the absence of Black dolls in childhood spaces and perception of beauty in early childhood development—both in her own upbringing and in contemporary Ghana.

Through research, community workshops, and archival exploration, Zohra raises essential questions: Where are our Black dolls? How do childhood toys shape self-perception? With this poignant body of work, Zohra invites us to reimagine representation, memory, and identity through the lens of art and childhood.

This episode is complemented by a beautifully curated playlist by the brilliant Ethel Tawe. Drawing inspiration from Zohra’s reflections on childhood, diaspora, Ghanaian history and futures, identity, and healing, Ethel crafts a sonic journey through genres like highlife, jazz, and meditative sounds, mirroring the interplay of life's highs and lows as essential to the human experience. Particularly striking is Zohra’s unwavering dedication to connection—her visionary initiative to invite African women artists to utilize her studio space while she travels exemplifies innovative and sustainable approaches to resource-sharing and fostering creative communities among women artists.

With Guest: Zohra Opoku examines the politics of personal identity formation through historical, cultural, and socio-economic influences, particularly in the context of contemporary Ghana. Opoku's explorations have been mostly through the lens of her camera; her photography is expressed through screen-printing and alternative photo processing on varieties of natural fabrics. While her work relays social commentary and broadly relevant themes around the human experience, each of Zohra's explorations is intimately rooted in personal identity politics. She repeatedly integrates family heirlooms and her self-image into her visual observations of Ghana's cultural memory. Zohra Opoku was born in Altdöbern (former GDR/ East Germany), lives and works in Accra, Ghana and is represented by Mariane Ibrahim Gallery Chicago, Paris and Mexico City.