Tanoa Sasraku was born to a British/Ghanaian family in Plymouth, England in 1995. She studied at Goldsmiths, University of London and the Royal Academy Schools and has established herself as a young British-African/Ghanaian-LGBTQ+ artist exploring themes around the rural British landscape and her multifaceted identity, working predominately with film-making, sculpture and textiles. In 2022 she held her first major solo show, 'Terratypes', at Bristol’s Spike Island and her work featured in 'Radical Landscapes' at Tate Liverpool.
Artist and film-maker Tanoa Sasraku was born in Plymouth, England in 1995. She is of biracial British/Ghanaian descent and identifies as gay. Her mother, Nicola Anash, regularly drew, while her father, Kofi Ansah, a Ghanaian fashion designer, studied at London's Chelsea School of Art. Sasraku stated in an interview: ‘My dad had a hard time emigrating [sic] to London in the 1970s as a young Black man coming from Ghana, and entering an incredibly white fashion industry. His family hailed from the Fante tribe, who used to fabricate these incredible war flags called Asafo flags, before independence in 1957’ (Benson, 2022). His presence in her life was intermittent, as he returned to Ghana in 1992. She initially pursued a BA at Goldsmiths from 2015 to 2018, followed by a later postgraduate degree at the Royal Academy Schools in London from 2021 to 2024.
Sasraku's body of work encompasses sculpture, textile, drawing, and film. Her art is deeply rooted in rural Britain, its legends, hidden histories, and historical sites, which she explores alongside her multifaceted identity as a young British-African/Ghanaian-LGBTQ+ individual from Plymouth, creating layered, abstract pieces which reflect geological and historical themes. She often personifies the landscape, feeling a sense of 'Britishness', despite her upbringing in a predominantly white, rural area (Benson, 2022). Her exploration of landscape, family history, and the human body are recurrent themes in her work, which typically features shredded, stained, intertwined lengths of newsprint, created using a sewing-like technique, a method that also connects her to her father. She also explores her West African heritage and the impact of colonialism through her use of newsprint to create banners reminiscent of the Fante Asafo flags from Ghana's central coast. Sasraku frequently uses textiles, often immersing them in river water, the sea or peat bogs. An incident, where she fell into a bog and discovered a dead horse, was a formative and sublime experience for her art. Her palette consists of earthy and natural tones, such deep blue, rusty ochre, and granite grey, crafted with pigments sourced from specific landscapes, such as Dartmoor, the Jurassic Coast, and the Isle of Skye. Her analogue films, while slightly different thematically, explore classic folklore but still reflect her identity. She strives to amalgamate the diverse aspects of her identity within modern England. Her 2019 film O' Pierrot, portraying a sorrowful jester, challenges the usual depiction of black people in the Jim Crow-era as angry, foolish, or submissive. The character Harlequin Jack symbolises a distressed African man, driven to madness in his quest for acceptance in British white society.
Opening in 2022 at Bristol’s Spike Island, her major solo exhibition Terratypes, explored the British wilderness, blending digital and traditional art forms in paper, photography, and bronze. The exhibition was based on an ongoing research project, studying inhospitable landscapes and one’s connection to energy, myth, rural nostalgia, modernity and recollections associated with them. Inspired by Dartmoor and the Scottish Highlands, the exhibition combined contrasting materials, such as microchips, tartan, and rocks.
In 2022, Sasraku's work featured in Radical Landscapes at Tate Liverpool, and the following year, she participated in the central pavilion exhibition at the Venice Architectural Biennale (2023). Her exhibited piece Guests from the Future: Yellow Gate (Terratype) (2021) continued the theme of her 2022 exhibition, merging diverse art forms such as sculpture, painting, and textiles into a single, unique, hybrid expression. She began by sourcing and producing natural dyes, then proceeded to stitch, soak, and twist sheets, revealing concealed layers of colour and pattern. This method, akin to pattern crafting, reflects her Ghanaian heritage and her bond with her late father. The fringe on each Terratype mirrors the distinctive fabric style of the Fante Asafo flags from coastal Ghana, made by Sasraku's forebears; printed geometric shapes symbolise electrical circuits and the movement of subterranean energy, while the tartan stitching patterns draw inspiration from her Scottish partner’s heritage. The final piece is both enigmatic and ceremonial.
Sasraku has been the recipient of several awards. In 2018, she won the Tenderflix ‘Future Responsibilities’ Award and in 2021 she was the winner of the Arts Foundation Futures Award. Tanoa Sasraku lives and words in Hackney, London. Her work is held in several public collections in the UK including the Arts Council Collection, Government Art Collection and the Royal Academy of Arts, London.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Tanoa Sasraku]
Publications related to [Tanoa Sasraku] in the Ben Uri Library