
Helene Love-Allotey
Head of Department
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Head of Department
Born in 1987 in Tamale, Ibrahim Mahama has quickly become one of the most exciting contemporary artists to emerge from Ghana. Educated at the esteemed Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (K.N.U.S.T.) leaving with both a Bachelor in Painting and a Masters in Painting and Sculpture from K.N.U.S.T. Mahama would go onto exhibit at Ghana's first national pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale in May 2019, and at Documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel in 2017. Additionally, Mahama has also exhibited at the White Cube gallery and created major installation works at Kumasi Railway station, and most recently at the 35th Bienal de São Paulo and Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof.
Mahama transforms found materials into structural forms that explore themes of global consumerism, migration, and economic exchange. The present work is representative of the sustained employment of jute sacks within his practice and epitomises the qualities of his most outstanding works. Made in Southeast Asia, the sacks are imported by the Ghana Cocoa Boards to package cocoa beans for export. The used sacks are then repurposed to carry animal feed, coal, and charcoal around the country for domestic consumption. Mahama consequently employs the jute sacks as material metaphors for the global circulation of commodities that pass through Ghana and its associated socio-economic inequities.
'My practice has been informed by the possibility of pursuing freedoms after encountering failure, and by employing the contradictions inherent in given conditions. Mundane objects become vehicles through which to test some of these ideas.' (Ibrahim Mahama, 'Notes from the lectures of kąrî'kạchä seid'ou', Labour of Many: Ibrahim Mahama, ed. by Robin Kirsten, (Cape Town: Norval Foundation, 2019).