Ibrahim Mahama (b. 1987, Tamale, Ghana) lives and works between Accra and Tamale. He studied painting and sculpture at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi (2013). The use of reused urban material characterises his artistic practice – remnants of wood, paper documents, jute sacks, shoeboxes, school blackboards and old doors – which he manipulates and transforms to explore themes such as the phenomenon of globalisation and migration and the trade in goods. As he explained, he is interested “in how crisis and failure are absorbed into this material, with a strong reference to the global transaction and the functioning of capitalist structures”.
Textiles hold a central role in his artistic practice and research; according to Mahama, these are like archived documents, marked with time, form and place. Although widely used in the Ghanaian market, jute sacks were originally manufactured in Southeast Asia and later imported into the country by the Ghana Cacao Board to transport cocoa beans. After being collected, the various fabrics are then sewn together, creating a monumental tapestry that the artist uses to cover and conceal buildings and architecture often linked to consumer societies.
A critical feature of the artist’s practice indeed is how he obtains his materials: for Non-Orientable Nkansa 1901 – 2030 (2016), for instance, Mahama engaged dozens of collaborators to produce hundreds of ‘shoemaker boxes’. These small wooden objects were made from structural materials found in the cities of Accra and Kumasi and used to contain tools for polishing and repairing shoes. Bearing the marks of the trade of ‘shoeshine boys’, the boxes also functioned as an improvised drum, pounded to solicit business. Again, for the installation Cause I Love You(2024), the artist used a series of painted plywood boards recovered from old Ghanaian ceilings and wooden doors from Ghanaian modernist buildings, which Mahama deliberately left in their original state, dirty and ruined, making the fragility of the materials an important part of the work.
In recent years, Mahama has channelled part of his activity into building interdisciplinary educational and training institutions near Tamale, Ghana. In 2019, Mahama opened the Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art (SCCA) in Tamale, a museum space run by a group of artists and curators active in Ghana, followed by the opening of a vast studio complex, Red Clay, in nearby Janna Kpeŋŋ in September 2020. Comprising exhibition spaces, research facilities and an artist residency centre, both sites represent Mahama’s contribution to the development and expansion of the contemporary art scene in his country. In April 2021, Mahama opened a renovated silo, Nkrumah Volini, in Tamale. This is the third educational institution he has opened in northern Ghana in the last two years.
