In the second part of Zohra Opoku’s image curation for KISUA, the Accra-based artist has taken inspiration from Poqua Poqu’s lace trimmed shirt dress. Here she talks us through her selected images. (The images are viewed top to bottom, left to right.)

INDIGO DRESS
“This dress as a contemporary interpretation of traditional African cloth - many square pieces of fabric, each equipped with buttons and holes and then connected to each other individually. It’s my homage to indigo, which led me to the blue of KISUA’s shirt dress.”

WORK TEXTURES 1 & 2
“Playing with clothes around the bodies of my friends is one of my current art practices. It’s a style of portrait photography that I call Sculptural Draping. Here Evelise and Adwoa are both wearing dresses that are a symphony of designs with nuances of blue.”

BEACH & UMBRELLA TREE
“What provides us with stronger colors and forms than nature? In Beach, nature loses its dimensions as the deep blue of the darkness dives into the sea. Meanwhile I have imitated umbrella tree leaves for my Monotype print, created using vegetation found around my studio. This print reminds me of the lace on KISUA’s shirt dress.”

NKULI
“Being fashionable is about having individual flair. My artist friend Nkuli is a smart, sweet-ass trendsetter from Johannesburg who mixes up designs, prints and vintage. I love studying what people like her wear as a means of understanding their characters.”

Images: Zohra Opoku