Araba Opoku is young, just 24 (she was born in May 1998). A psychology student at the University of Ghana, Legon, Opoku is also a multidisciplinary artist who takes the difficult topics she comes across in her studies and absorbs them into complex paintings and video works. In her 2020 project “Children of the Motley’s Cycle,” for example, she painted with acrylic on X-ray films, then sewed the films together with cotton threads. Masochism, memory, and mental health were the underlying themes in this body of work, which combined abstraction with surrealism. Opoku’s first solo show with Gallery 1957 focuses on water scarcity in the capital. —Elena Clavarino