Ibrahim Mahama on making art from the detritus of colonialism.

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As the youngest artist to exhibit in the first-ever Ghanaian pavilion at the Venice Biennale, Ibrahim Mahama’s renown is growing worldwide – both for the scale of his work as well as the way in which it tackles complex and complicated aspects of his country’s past. Perhaps best known for his monumental installations, which see architectural structures draped in vast patchworks of old jute sacks, comparable to the work of the great Christo, he is not simply concerned with spectacle. These pieces represent the very fabric of Ghanaian life.

Once the leading producer and exporter of cocoa, Ghana’s legacy of commerce is tied to these seemingly innocuous objects. Once they’ve served their purpose in housing cocoa, they go on to live extended lives of usefulness as a means of transporting coal. The artist acquires and reappropriates these materials – integral in the commercial functioning of his country – and examines the methods and processes they play a part in by reimagining their makeup and stitching them back together in new forms. Typically installed in art spaces and public markets, this draping draws attention to the global transportation of goods across borders. His belief in the role of art in not only making symbolic objects but also shifting existing perspectives lends his installations great conceptual strength.

“I used jute sacks because the history of crisis and failure is absorbed into the material. Their history speaks of how global transactions and capitalist structures work. Their humbleness contrasts with the monumentality of the buildings they cover,” he explains.

Mahama’s affinity for the everyday and discarded object extends further than just the jute sacks he’s become known for. A recent exhibition in Manchester saw the artist bring over dozens of plastic train seats and abandoned wooden lockers for his recent show ‘Parliament of Ghosts’. By creating a four-sided imitation of Ghana’s parliament chamber at the Whitworth gallery in Manchester, he addresses the optimism of post-independence Ghana and the subsequent failure to capitalise on opportunities (the ‘ghosts’ in his title). Ghana’s train system is a symbol of this. Built under British colonial rule, it was due to be expanded after 1957, but economic growth struggled to gain momentum and military coups halted progress. As a result, the railways were neglected for decades.

Summary:

Ibrahim Mahama uses the transformation of materials to explore themes of commodity, migration, globalisation and economic exchange. Often made in collaboration with others, his large-scale installations employ materials gathered from urban environments, such as remnants of wood, or jute sacks which are stitched together and draped over architectural structures. Mahama’s interest in material, process and audience first led him to focus on jute sacks that are synonymous with the trade markets of Ghana where he lives and works. Fabricated in South East Asia, the sacks are imported by the Ghana Cocoa Boards to transport cocoa beans and eventually end up as multi-functional objects, used for the transportation of food, charcoal and other commodities. ‘You find different points of aesthetics within the surface of the sacks’ fabric’, Mahama has said. ‘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.’

Ibrahim Mahama was born in 1987 in Tamale, Ghana. He lives and works in Accra, Kumasi and Tamale. His work has appeared in numerous international exhibitions including the 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, Dusseldorf (2015); Material Effects, The Broad Art Museum, Michigan (2015); An Age of Our Own Making, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen and Holbæk (2016) and Fracture, Tel Aviv Art Museum, Israel (2016). Ibrahim Mahama will feature in Ghana's first national pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale in May 2019.