Tanoa Sasraku's practice shifts between sculpture, drawing and filmmaking, juxtaposing and performing British, Black, Ghanaian and queer cultural histories. Sasraku’s stitched and torn newsprint works are inspired by the material structure of the Fante Asafo flags of coastal Ghana and geometric forms found in Tartan cloth, towers and pinnacles of rock. Her own banners map personal stories of a life lived in modern Britain, as newsprint, pigment and basic craft processes bind together to create cryptic, ceremonial objects. In her practice as a filmmaker, Sasraku engages in retellings of traditional folklore from a black and lesbian perspective, as well as producing more diaristic journeys through her past, via the medium of analogue film. The presence of her figure, set against sweeping, rural landscapes throws into question mythologies surrounding “deep” England and what it means to claim ownership over the rural.
Read MoreTanoa Sasraku (b. 1995, Plymouth) graduated from Goldsmiths College (2018) and is currently enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools. A major solo institutional exhibition of her work took place at Spike Island, Bristol, 2022. Sasraku’s first solo exhibition in London will take place at Vardaxoglou, October 2022. Recent selected solo and group exhibitions include Radical Landscapes, Tate Liverpool, UK (2022); TESTAMENT, CCA Goldsmiths, London, UK (2022); O’Pierrot: Hands and Plaids (online), Alex Vardaxoglou, London (2021); A Tower to Say Goodbye, General Release, Chelsea Sorting Office (2021); Recession Grimace, Klosterruine, Berlin, (2020); Tanoa Sasraku: O’Pierrot, LUX Moving Image, London (2020); Resist: be modern (again), John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, UK (2019); Nashashibi/Skaer – Thinking through other artists, Tate St Ives, UK (2019). Sasraku’s moving image works have been screened at the BFI Southbank, as part of the 18th London Short Film Festival (2021); Selected X, VideoClub online and touring (2020); Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival, Berwick-upon-Tweed (2019). In 2021, Sasraku was awarded the Arts Foundation Futures Award for Visual Arts.
