I appear in glory. I am conducted within. I am ennobled as a god. She places me on this sacred path on which Thoth traveled when he pacified the Two Fighters

Zohra Opoku is a sculptor, photographer, and textile visual artist who identifies herself as “German, Afro-German, African, Ghanaian, Obroni (‘foreigner’ in Twi) and Asante”. Inspired by West African traditions, ancient Egyptian cycles of life, and the natural world, she deals with fragility, care, and recovery from traumas in her works. These themes are strongly present in her bronze sculpture, which takes the form of a coral that appears to be suffering from bleaching. It occurs when coral polyps expel the algae that live inside their tissue due to ocean acidification, turning the vermilion organism into a pale skeleton. The coral’s fragile state is a metaphor of Opoku’s bodily and mental condition after being diagnosed with cancer. The work’s title is an excerpt from An Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Papyrus of Sobekmose, which refers to a resurrection from the underworld. The process of healing is compared to a transition from a vulnerable condition of apparent death to a new form of life, figuratively represented by the coral’s gold colour.