Ibrahim Mahama

Born in 1987 in Tamale, Ghana, Ibrahim Mahama creates works from collected materials, archives, and fragments of Ghana’s industrial heritage. Jute, emblematic of his work, is used here as a scenographic element in the exhibition. His textile works are made from jute sacks once used to transport cocoa and charcoal. These recovered materials preserve the traces of a history marked by manual labor and international economic exchange.

From 2007 onwards, he studied at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi, Ghana, an important artistic and intellectual hub in West Africa, where several artists in this exhibition studied. It was here that Ibrahim Mahama developed his unique practice of collecting and assembling raw materials, giving rise to monumental installations that unfold in public spaces and question the memory of his country.

His work also engages with the legacy of Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, and the ambitions of the post-independence period (1957–1966). Sixty years after the coup of February 24, 1966, which extinguished some of this momentum, the artist revisits the narratives, ruins, and infrastructures to explore unfulfilled promises and give rise to new forms. It is in this spirit that he founded the Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art (2019), Red Clay (2020), and Nkrumah Voli-ni (2022) in Tamale, a rural region in northern Ghana. These three art centers are dedicated to creation, heritage preservation, and the transmission of expertise to younger generations.