Those striking photos at Sankofa Square? They capture a journey of self-discovery

Since the beginning of January, an outdoor photography exhibition has been lighting up Toronto's Sankofa Square. It's called At the Conjuring of Roots, I Wished to Meet Me …, and will appear there through the end of the month. 

Five massive screens at the corner of Yonge and Dundas display a collection of striking portraits by Delali Cofie. The images hold their own against the jumble of billboards that dominate the intersection, and depending on your vantage point, it's possible to spy the art from blocks away. 

That was Cofie's own experience of seeing the show for the first time. He was walking north on Yonge, he says, when he caught sight of a photo and felt his heart skip a beat. "It was a bit unbelievable," he says, flashing back to that moment. "I turned the corner and the images were right there, you know. Everywhere." 

In each shot, incredible garments fill the frame, pulling all focus. They are voluminous creations that ripple with fringey layers of raffia and ruffles. In one picture, a woman lies in bed. She appears serene, lost in thought. Only her head is visible, however; a cocoon of bristles and patterned fabric has enveloped the rest of her. In another portrait, shot at night, a lone figure stands against a garden wall framed by leafy shrubs and branches. In a way, the model is camouflaged — hidden by the heavy layers of a grassy, green cloak. And yet, they demand to be seen. Their gaze is steady. Self-assured. Through the trees and shadows, their bright eyes lock on the viewer.  

The exhibition is appearing downtown as part of DesignTO. More of Cofie's work can be seen at another festival event, a group exhibition called Revive, which is on at the Harbourfront Centre through March 30. But for Cofie, there was something especially remarkable about seeing his large-scale photographs appear in Sankofa Square amid the crowds of Eaton Centre shoppers — the traffic, the skyscrapers and all the chaos of the city.

"I was a little speechless, to be honest. And when I think about it now, I still am. Thinking about the concept of the work and the story behind it," he says, "it shows the spirit of what I was aiming for." 

The project, he says, "is basically an ode to self," he says — a story of becoming who we will be. 

Meet the artist

So who is Delali Cofie? He's an artist with a busy schedule, for one. In addition to the DesignTO exhibitions, Cofie has a show at the Stewart Hall art gallery in Pointe-Claire, Que., this month. That group exhibition, Afrotopos, runs through March 30. And in early March, he'll be off to Milan, where he'll be bringing more of his work to the PhotoVogue Festival. 

It just goes to show how much can change in a year. This time last winter, Cofie was still a student at OCAD University. He graduated in the spring, and the photos appearing at DesignTO emerged from his award-winning thesis project. Like the show appearing at the corner of Yonge and Dundas, that series' title is At the Conjuring of Roots, I Wished to Meet Me…. 

The pictures were shot in Accra, Cofie's hometown in Ghana. Born in 1999, the artist was raised in Africa, but moved to Toronto in 2017 for university. Originally, his plan was to study mechanical engineering at York University, but soon, he realized his true calling was photography, and he enrolled at OCAD in 2020.

By his second year at OCAD, Cofie was already working through ideas he'd realize in At the Conjuring of Roots, I Wished to Meet Me…. At first, he was interested in the masquerade traditions that exist across West Africa. He was inspired by "the magnificence of those costumes," he says, and he began thinking about how identity and the construction of self might be represented through wearing one of these incredible, layered garments. He imagined it as "this weight that you balance, that you carry around," he says. "It can be a burden, or it can be a graceful sort of carry."

Clothes make the man

Cofie designed the clothing that appears in his photographs. The frame-filling garb is made of raffia, a palm native to Africa. He also incorporates plenty of fabric — used fabric — which is selected for its symbolic heft. 

The patterns are cut from bedsheets and old clothes, things he gathered from home and also purchased secondhand. "I call them artifacts of time," he says of the material. Each finished costume is meant to be a representation of who we are as individuals, he says. "You are wearing the history that you don't necessarily see."

Like a lot of students, Cofie would go back home when he could, visiting family in the summer and over the holidays. It was during such a trip in 2023 that he began developing the project in earnest. His dad, who's also an artist, was an early supporter of the idea. 

"It's kind of wild, but he was all for it," says Cofie. He brought his son old clothes that he could use, including the outfit he was wearing when he proposed to Cofie's mother. Together, they found traders who'd sell them raffia, and artisans who could dye it forest green and a rich blood red. They also hired a team of seamstresses to realize Cofie's designs. While those local sewers had never made masquerade costumes before, everyone threw themselves into the challenge, with the elder Cofie acting as a translator between the artist and artisans. "Although I was born and raised in Ghana, I don't speak any of the local languages," he says. "There were many hands involved in bringing the vision to life."

'A process of self-discovery'

The opportunity to work so closely with his dad was one of the most meaningful aspects of the project, Cofie explains, and there's a photo at Harbourfront Centre where the two men are pictured together. They sit side by side in matching robes, as the artist turns toward his father. The elder Cofie looks straight ahead, his expression full of pride. "But I'm also controlling the camera, looking back at us," says Cofie. "It's thinking about the cyclical nature of life, and the project, and sort of searching for myself within my father."    

"That's not an image I could have planned for," he says. "I think that's something that really just came to me as I was working on the project and seeing how collaborative it was." 

"The project is about self-discovery," says Cofie, "and making the work became a process of self-discovery as well. Simply being in Accra shaped the direction of the project, he explains. "I think despite growing up there [in Ghana] my entire life, there's always been some points where I didn't necessarily fully feel connected." As a kid, he felt caught between cultures. His mom is from Nigeria; his dad is from Ghana. "We sort of just spoke English at home," he says, and there were times when he felt like a tourist in his own city. The search for "home" has been a recurring theme in his work, he says, but being back on familiar streets — spending time in his parents' home, his father's garden — shifted his perspective a bit, attuning him to the heightened emotion of returning to a place he knows well.

Cofie is continuing to work on the series, and he plans to expand it with short films and more photographs later this year. He's designing additional apparel too. "[It] feels like this is a large internal adventure where I'm meeting different forms of myself," he says of the process. And he feels like a new person compared to who he was at the start of this creative journey.

"Seeing the way [the series] has been received is extremely affirming," he says. "I feel like I'm starting to realize my voice."