Araba Opoku: Whispers Down the Lane

Araba Opoku: Whispers Down The Lane, Gallery 1957 (Sept – Nov 2022)

Gallery 1957, Ghana is proud to announce the gallery’s first solo exhibition of new works by Araba Opoku (b. 1998, Ghana), running from September 24 to November 18, 2022. Opoku won the first edition of The Yaa Asantewaa Art Prize in 2021, an accolade launched by Gallery 1957 dedicated to women artists living and working in Ghana and its diaspora.

Based in Accra, artist Araba Opoku paints psychological dreamscapes that delve into socioeconomic problems. Her current body of work focuses on water scarcity in the capital. The immersive show at Gallery 1957, Accra presents new canvases alongside video projections, textiles, installations and sounds creating a sensory experience of the artist’s nighttime vigil. Across an abstract, ethereal body of work, Opoku’s paintings of aquatic blues and vegetative greens subtly evoke her ritualistic experience of collecting water, which began when she moved to Dansoman with her mother and sister a decade ago.

Exploring this tradition of gathering water at midnight across generations, the exhibition considers the effects of moonlight, the cyclical nature of being, lost twins and symmetry, the passing of transitory memory and constellations made from stars to spiders. For this new body of work, the artist persistently turns towards these nocturnal creatures, connecting the intricate worlds she creates in her art to the expansive blankets ensuing from their webs; textile-like places that make you feel safe, held and capable of imagining new and endless possibilities.

Araba Opoku

“My work for the past 5 years has explored aspects of complexity, chaos and intricacy. Most of my work stems from the need to break free from boundaries society has set on me and the need to draw other people like me together, as a collective unit, creating an ecosystem of boundless, limitless expressions of self. I find myself continually returning to aspects of life that are often hidden or misrepresented in the society that we live in. I focus on the topics society talks about but has minimum or no control over. My research allows me to channel my energy into producing art that represents the silent voices that need to be heard and the context and final products of my work have had an impact on people like and unlike me who have experienced my process or viewed my art.”

“This exhibition focuses on the midnight hour of gathering water: a daunting yet dreamlike cycle in resonance with the moon. Through a personal exploration of limited resources, inter-connected communities and repeating rituals —both physical and psychological— Araba’s watery worlds conjure hope, beauty and even satisfaction from struggle. Her paintings form choreographies of colour that propel us into another universe: an upside-down limbo where our nocturnal senses help us not only hydrate but heal.”

Katherine Finerty, Exhibition Curator