Ibrahim Mahama Present Is Headed to Paris—However Its Core Is in Ghana

Hearken to Ibrahim Mahama communicate, and he’s more likely to credit score his success to his group, which incorporates market ladies, weavers, craftsmen, studio assistants, railway employees, curators, professors, and fellow artists.

The Ghanaian artist is fast to acknowledge their contributions when he receives one of many many awards he’s picked up just lately. Ranked on the prime of the influential ArtReview Energy 100 record in 2025, he additionally gained an Artwork Basel Gold Award that yr and obtained the 2026 Arnold Bode prize. He was additionally just lately named a chevalier of the French authorities’s Ordre des Arts et des Lettres; the honour was bestowed upon him in Ghana by Diarra Dime Labille, France’s Ambassador to the West African nation.

“We reside and work in a group and no person is an island by themselves. I constructed my apply primarily based on the thought of collectivity and dealing with totally different collaborators,” Mahama defined in an interview with ARTnews. For example, he cited the scornful and at occasions suspicious reactions of Mallam Atta market ladies in Accra when he began accumulating worn-out jute sacks on the early stage of his profession, particularly as a result of he was nonetheless in faculty when he started producing these works. (The works he produced utilizing these sacks rapidly gained him fame, with some memorably showing in Okwui Enwezor’s Venice Biennale in 2015.) As he hung out with the market ladies, they got here to know what he was doing and continued supporting him, serving to him acquire the sacks that also recur in his artwork.

“I feel the artist is only a vessel, and I see myself as that vessel with a purpose to put all these various things collectively to do the work that we do,” he added.

Mahama has grow to be one of the internationally seen Ghanaian artists, displaying his work at biennials and museums the world over, and directing his success again to Ghana: The cash from the gross sales of Mahama’s work is directed towards constructing establishments that he founds, together with the Tamale-based Pink Clay Studio and the Savannah Centre for Modern Artwork. He’s additionally purchased dilapidated or deserted buildings, factories, and airplanes, and turned them into artwork and academic areas, as he did with Nkrumah Voli-ni, additionally in Tamale.

These tasks, which Mahama known as a “lifetime work,” breathe new life into collected supplies, archives, industrial and nationwide heritage. His work at occasions extends past Ghana to incorporate worldwide like with individuals just like the Kenyan British artist Michael Armitage and his Nairobi Modern Artwork Institute. Studying from these conversations and changing into half of a giant group expands the scope of what’s doable is Mahama’s apply.

On Thursday, Mahama will open one more epic venture: “The Harvest Season,” an exhibition on the Fondation Cartier pour l’artwork contemporain in Paris, whose complete constructing he’ll take over beginning subsequent week. The present is “probably the most formidable exhibition I’ve finished,” Mahama stated.

Parliament of Ghosts, an ongoing set up fabricated from discarded prepare seats, railway sleepers, faculty furnishings, worn-out jute sacks, and authorities archives that premiered in 2019 will determine within the Fondation Cartier present in a brand new iteration that provides about 200 collected and restored royal stools from the Asante Empire.

The concept, Mahama stated, is to spotlight a contradiction: These identical stools, which are sometimes looted earlier than being exhibited in Western museums, are at occasions positioned in glass circumstances. On the Fondation Cartier, individuals can have free entry to them. He hopes this can invert questions across the return of African objects from Europe, asking: What occurs when these stools are introduced from Ghana to Europe as “residing” objects and utilized for his or her authentic goal, and never in museum circumstances or glasses? Doing so brings out the “the ghosts [and] histories” of those stools, creating an avenue for various conversations, he added.

There’s additionally a brand new venture created by Mahama for this exhibition centered on the Aboso Glass Manufacturing unit, which was established in 1966 by Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, as a part of the nation’s industrialization efforts, earlier than he was overthrown in a coup in that very same yr. Titled Issues Fall Aside, after the 1958 novel by Nigerian creator Chinua Achebe, it’s a reconstruction of the deserted glass bottle manufacturing plant that Mahama bought some two years in the past with manufacturing funds from Fondation Cartier.

The Paris set up is simply a small a part of the venture, nonetheless, for the reason that glass manufacturing facility is being rebuilt in areas together with Pink Clay Studio in Tamale and a British-era colonial constructing. When the Fondation Cartier exhibition ends, the manufacturing facility might be returned to Ghana for everlasting set up in Kumasi, the place Mahama plans to construct a brand new establishment. He’s additionally working with cinema homeowners and native craftsmen to discover the opportunity of rebuilding some deserted cinemas within the nation.

As well as, a set of works on the Ghanaian railway system will even be on show within the exhibition. A brand new textile set up utilizing Ghanaian materials produced in northern Ghana, truck interior tubes, jute sacks, and located textiles might be hung throughout the arcades on the facades of the Fondation Cartier constructing.

“There’s a dialogue between this previous constructing [constructed in the 1850s] and Ibrahim’s work, which addresses the historical past of the nineteenth century in Ghana, and the hyperlinks between what was taking place between Europe and West Africa at the moment,” stated Aby Gaye-Duparc, the curator of the exhibition.

“What we actually wish to convey to the viewers is that there are two sides of [Mahama]’s creative apply,” stated Gaye-Duparc. “There’s work that we see: installations, movies, work on paper. Every thing comes from this group in Tamale that he has constructed as a result of quite a lot of the installations had been made first in Tamale after which journey to Paris or different venues.”

The opposite half, Gaye-Duparc continued, “is the work behind it that’s being in-built Tamale,” referring to the artist’s constructing of creative infrastructure and establishments within the Northern Ghana metropolis. These constructions, she added, have expanded entry to the humanities for individuals who had been neglected for varied causes.

In step with Mahama’s collaborative method, the Paris exhibition will even characteristic work by artists and collectives together with James Barnor, Gideon Appah, CATPC (Cercle d’Artwork des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise), Tjaša Rener, Postbox Ghana, Braveness Dzidula Kpodo, and Dorothy Akpene Amenuke, Mahama’s mentor.

Kpodo, an architect, will exhibit work that addresses modernism, turning the main focus away from tropical modernism centered on concrete buildings, which had been typically constructed by foreigners in Ghanaian cities. The central piece might be a wall reconstruction made out of laterite from a constructing he owns in Gyampo, within the Japanese Area, utilized in so-called vernacular or conventional buildings. The set up will embrace about 100 postcards by the Postbox Ghana collective depicting tropical modernist architectural buildings in cities corresponding to Accra, Kumasi and Takoradi.

“I’d describe Ibrahim as somebody who makes area inside his personal talents and means for those who he thinks are doing fascinating, necessary work,” stated Kpodo.

The Fondation Cartier exhibition is without doubt one of the first main ones by Mahama staged since he was viciously attacked earlier this yr by a particular operations unit of the Ghana Police Service in Tamale, the place he lives and works. Mahama famous the group help that he obtained throughout the fallout, saying, “It was improbable, I need to say. I used to be actually overwhelmed, as a result of typically you don’t understand how a lot your work means to individuals.” He added that individuals traveled from inside Tamale and from different cities like Accra and Kumasi came over him, specific remorse, and bemoan the remedy meted out to him by the police, particularly due to his appreciable contributions to town.

He stated he was unaware of the present state of the investigations into the matter by the Felony Investigation Division as directed by Ghana’s Inspector Common of Police as a result of he hadn’t obtained updates in months. However he additionally appeared extra all for concentrating on his artwork. “I wish to channel my power into this constructive a part of my apply of what I do and what it means to the group,” he defined. “However actually, I’m additionally fairly disillusioned in the way in which that it was dealt with by the police. And I hope that in some unspecified time in the future, we can no less than know extra [about the investigations], in order that we see what route to take it in.” He plans to comply with up once more when he settles again in Ghana by the top of the yr from his travels.

For now, he’s extra centered on supporting the group he has helped create. “I’m pleased that the work I do has a really profound that means and impact on individuals who reside on our continent, particularly Ghana. I’m additionally all for how this work is touring all over the world, stretching the African sensibilities, and what we’re bringing to artwork within the twenty first century.”