Ibrahim Mahama, born in Ghana in 1987, is an artist living and working in Accra, Kumasi, and Tamale, all cities in Ghana. Though he was trained in painting and sculpture at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Mahama works most often in large-scale installations and architecture interventions. An abiding commitment to textile, collage techniques, and the oral histories of those involved in the construction of the built enviroment complicate the monumentality of his work, contributing to an incisive critique of contemporary global trade networks.
International recognition followed Mahama's contribution to the 56th Venice Biennale, a work entitled Out of Bounds (2015) that involved covering the walls of the Arsenale with jute sacks. Mahama sourced the material for his installation from Ghanian markets at their end of their life cycle; the sacks were originally produced in South East Asia, then imported to ship cocoa beans, and finally used to transport commodities on a local scale, such as charcoal and food stuffs. Mahama explains, "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 has had recent solo exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Osnabrück, Germany (2023), Oude Kerk, Amsterdam (2022) and the Frac Pays de la Loire (2022). Mahama's work was included in the Sharjah Biennial (2023), the International Venice Architecture Biennale (2023), the 35th Bienal de São Paulo (2023), and Documenta 14, Athens and Kassel (2017), among many other international exhibitions. Mahama founded the Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art (SCCA), Red Clay Studio, and Nkrumah Voli-ni, all spaces dedicated to exhibitions, research, and community-based learning in Tamale.
* www.whitecube.com/artists/ibrahim-mahama
Price: 80 Sek (free admission for students)
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World in My Eyes – An Artist Lecture Series
All the islands in the ocean
All the heavens in the motion
Let me show you the world in my eyes
// Depeche Mode (1990)
In its third season, the artist talk series World in My Eyes presents Ibrahim Mahama, Aki Sasamoto and Zoe Leonard. Each artist contributes to both the discursive and formal hybridity of contemporary art at a moment of acute geopolitical volatility and increasing polarization.
Launched in 2023, World in My Eyes is an artist lecture series in Stockholm presented through a collaboration between Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design; Moderna Museet; and the Royal Institute of Art and hosted by Mötesplats Mariatorget. Its title drawn from the eponymous 1990s electronic music hit by English band Depeche Mode, the series aims to present artistic perspectives from a wide range of media that are changing the relationship between material processes and socio-political imagination.