Ibrahim Mahama

Mahama is one of the most influential voices in contemporary art today and the first African artist to top ArtReview’s Power 100. Mahama practice is characterised by the use of reused urban material – 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 Mahama said ‘I am interested in how crisis and failure are absorbed into this material with a strong reference to global transactions and how capitalist structures work.” 

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 September 2020. Comprising exhibition spaces, research facilities and an artist residency centre, both sites represent Mahama’s contribution to developing and expanding 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. 

Portrait: Ibrahim Mahama. Courtesy of the Artist and APALAZZOGALLERY. Photo by Peter Rosemann.