Digital representation of Araba Opoku Studio with works in progress. Courtesy of Araba Opoku's Studio
Based in Accra, Ghana, Araba Opoku (b. 1998) is a multidisciplinary artist, creative director and collaborator. She primarily works in abstract painting, but her practice spans across photo manipulation, textile design, sound and filmmaking. Her expansive practice presently explores water scarcity in Accra alongside ideas of the supernatural and world building. The multiplicity of ecologies at all stages inform Opoku, expanding upon her practice. Her works take on the form of borderline abstraction with a touch of surrealism.
In dreaming there are endless worlds, escapism is realized yet when we are awakened, the gift of world building prevails, a world within a world. The multiplicity of ecologies, the worlds that exist within and without. Opoku is intrigued by the possibility of world building in the tangible, that is nature and the vast topography of our minds and bodies and micro ecosystems in tandem with the intangible forms of the spiritual, the supernatural and the mystic. Her work also draws inspiration from the worlds existent in these planes of material and verbal culture. How is everything connected? She acknowledges the
existence and plausibility of these worlds. Pools of storytelling and uninitiated universes make headway in her work.
Self-taught, Opoku balances her practice with her education in psychology at the University of Ghana. Her works have recently been exhibited at Lehmann Maupin (London), Mitchell Innes & Nash (New York), Gallery 1957 (Accra), Ada/Contemporary (Accra), Art X Lagos etc.