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Lot Essay
Ibrahim Mahama is best-known for his prolific use of jute sacks, sourced from his native Ghana. These sacks are imported by the Ghana Cocoa Board and repurposed into multi-functional objects where they are used in the transportation of various other commodities, notably charcoal. Mahama acquires the jute sacks he uses in exchange for new ones, valuing the memorial power and patina of the old, timeworn textiles.
Mahama is noted for using the sacks in monumental large-scale installations, often swathing vast buildings in fabrics, subverting the politics of space and imposing new meanings upon them. Mahama’s choice of materials examines the mismanagement of resources, informal economies and labour practices, and explores themes of globalisation, commodity, and migration.
In Samsia Tahida we see Mahama’s signature sacks stitched together into an intimate, painterly composition, complete with sewn patches, printed text and a scrap of brightly-patterned wax-print fabric. Worn, torn and weathered, the materials come together in a tragic beauty reminiscent of Arte Povera.
Living and working in Tamale, Ghana, in 2019 Mahama established the Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art (SCCA), an open access cultural centre, functioning as a project space and research hub actively addressing the lack of arts infrastructure in his home region. This was followed by the opening of a vast studio complex, Red Clay, in nearby Kepnn in September 2020, and a renovated silo, Nkrumah Volini, in Tamale in April 2021.
Mahama has shown in numerous major international venues including Documenta 14, Kassel and Athens (2017), The Whitworth, University of Manchester (2019), and in the inaugural Ghana pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale (2019). He produced a major exhibition Out of Bounds at the 56th Venice Biennale (2015), curated by Okwui Enwezor. Using his trademark jute sacks on a monumental scale he activated a corridor in the Troncone section of the Arsenale, embedding itself into the heart of the Biennale. In 2020, Mahama was made the Principal Prince Claus Laureate, and awarded the University of Michigan Museum of Art International Art Prize.
Mahama is noted for using the sacks in monumental large-scale installations, often swathing vast buildings in fabrics, subverting the politics of space and imposing new meanings upon them. Mahama’s choice of materials examines the mismanagement of resources, informal economies and labour practices, and explores themes of globalisation, commodity, and migration.
In Samsia Tahida we see Mahama’s signature sacks stitched together into an intimate, painterly composition, complete with sewn patches, printed text and a scrap of brightly-patterned wax-print fabric. Worn, torn and weathered, the materials come together in a tragic beauty reminiscent of Arte Povera.
Living and working in Tamale, Ghana, in 2019 Mahama established the Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art (SCCA), an open access cultural centre, functioning as a project space and research hub actively addressing the lack of arts infrastructure in his home region. This was followed by the opening of a vast studio complex, Red Clay, in nearby Kepnn in September 2020, and a renovated silo, Nkrumah Volini, in Tamale in April 2021.
Mahama has shown in numerous major international venues including Documenta 14, Kassel and Athens (2017), The Whitworth, University of Manchester (2019), and in the inaugural Ghana pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale (2019). He produced a major exhibition Out of Bounds at the 56th Venice Biennale (2015), curated by Okwui Enwezor. Using his trademark jute sacks on a monumental scale he activated a corridor in the Troncone section of the Arsenale, embedding itself into the heart of the Biennale. In 2020, Mahama was made the Principal Prince Claus Laureate, and awarded the University of Michigan Museum of Art International Art Prize.