Ibrahim Mahama

Ibrahim Mahama uses the transformation of materials to explore themes of commodity, migration, globalisation and economic exchange. Often made in collaboration with others, his installations employ materials gathered from urban environments, such as remnants of wood, paper documents, or jute sacks, which are stitched together and draped over architectural structures. Mahama says: “I am interested in how crisis and failure are absorbed into this material with a strong reference to global transaction and how capitalist structures work.”

Conceived in connection with the architectural traces of disused buildings that tell the social and industrial history of the places that generated them, the series of collages and the sculpture-installation presented here reconstruct the reminiscences and connections of the social and cultural memory associated with that of some areas of his country of origin, Ghana, giving life to an ideal geographical, cultural, historical, anthropological and social ‘bridge’. A critical feature of the artist’s practice is the process by which he obtains his materials. Mahama and his collaborators obtain these items through a process of negotiation and exchange. Gathered together in single, monumental units, the material-cum-works are re-purposed and become part of Mahama’s ongoing inquiry into their life and their dynamic potential.

Ibrahim Mahama (Tamale, Ghana, 1987). He lives and works in Accra, Kumasi, and Tamale, Ghana. His work has appeared in numerous international exhibitions including NIRIN, 22nd Biennale of Sydney (2020); tomorrow, there will be more of us, Stellenbosch Triennale (2020); Ghana Freedom, inaugural Ghana pavilion, 58th Venice Biennale, Venice (2019); Labour of Many, Norval Foundation, Cape Town (2019); Documenta 14, Athens and Kassel (2017); All the World’s Futures, 56th Venice Biennale, Venice (2015); Artist’s Rooms, K21, Düsseldorf (2015); Material Effects, The Broad Art Museum, Michigan (2015); An Age of Our Own Making, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen and Holbæk (2016).