Tanoa Sasraku
b. 1995, United Kingdom
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.
Tanoa Sasraku (b. 1995, Plymouth) graduated from Goldsmiths College (2018) and is currently enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools. Recent solo exhibitions include Vardaxoglou, London (2022); Spike Island, Bristol (2022) and most recently, PEER staged Sasraku’s first London solo institutional exhibition, on view from 17 February – 20 May 2023. Opening October 2023, Vardaxoglou will stage a solo exhibition at the gallery alongside a Tanoa Sasraku solo presentation at Frieze London of new ‘Terratypes’.
Sasraku will be included in UNBUILD, Drawing Room’s inaugural exhibition in their new location (2023), and work by Sasraku is currently being exhibited as part of Venice Architectural Biennale, Venice (2023) curated by Lesley Lokko. Selected recent exhibitions include Newlyn Art Gallery & The Exchange, Newlyn (2023); Radical Landscapes, Tate Liverpool, Liverpool; tr. Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry (2022); TESTAMENT, CCA Goldsmiths, London, UK (2022); 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.