Ibrahim Mahama

In 2025, Mahama became the first person from the African continent to top ArtReview’s Power 100, honoured both for his artistic practice and for creating infrastructures that support other artists in realising their visions. In 2025 he also received the Art Basel & UBS Artist of the Year Award and the Gold Award in the Established Artist category at the inaugural Art Basel Awards. Known for his large-scale installations made from jute sacks previously used to transport cocoa beans and charcoal, which are emblematic of Ghana’s commodity dependency. His work explores themes of commodity, migration, globalization, and economic exchange. Mahama’s ambitious installations often transform urban spaces and are a commentary on labor and decay.His notable projects include "Out of Bounds" at the 2015 Venice Biennale and "A Straight Line Through the Carcass of History" which has been shown in various locations worldwide, including Athens, Kassel, and New York. These works critically examine the impact of the material history of post-colonial Ghana within the context of global commerce. • Illustration — Red Clay Studio, Tamale, Ghana • Illustration — Parliament of Ghosts, Tamale, Ghana • Illustration — Documenta 14, Kassel, 2017 • Illustration — Purple Hibiscus, Barbican Centre, London, United Kingdom, 2024

• Name — Ibrahim Mahama • Born — 1987 • Birthplace — Tamale, Northern Region, Ghana • Education — Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology • Occupation — Artist and Founder of Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art, Redclay and Nikromah Voli-ni

Mahama was born in 1987 in Tamale, Ghana, the ninth of ten siblings in a polygamous family. Growing up in a large family environment influenced his ability to work collaboratively and recognize connections across different social contexts. His grandfather lived in a car repair shop in Accra, while his father, a civil engineer and road contractor in Tamale, inspired his early fascination with industrial materials and labor systems. From a young age, he enjoyed drawing and found a sense of peace through creative expression. He attended boarding school from the age of five to twelve, followed by two years at a Catholic school before transferring to a boarding school for his secondary education. In high school, he chose to specialize in visual arts, encouraged and supported by his father. He went on to study fine art at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi, where he specialized in painting and sculpture, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting in 2010, a Master of Fine Arts in Painting and Sculpture in 2013, and a PhD in fine art in 2015. During his time at the university, Mahama became increasingly interested in how materials carry memory, particularly found objects such as jute sacks, wood, and metal that reflect the movement of goods, labor, and histories across borders. His early installations, often composed of stitched-together jute sacks, were shown at the local market in Accra. He has described his time at university; "For us it was more about producing work that would somehow change the relationship between art and the market - and create new forms of the market in the future." His works were also exhibited on the university building and the railway station, marking the beginning of his conceptual approach to art as a tool for critical engagement, civic dialogue, and architectural intervention. Mahama credits art educator Kąrî'kạchä Seid'ou from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology and the pedagogy of blaxTARLINES KUMASI with shaping his understanding of art as a transformative social tool. Seid'ou's notion of art as a "gift to society" remains central to Mahama's philosophy of art-making and institution-building. He is today a member of blaxTARLINES KUMASI.

Ibrahim Mahama rose to international prominence through large-scale, site-specific interventions using stitched-together jute sacks. Stamped with the Product of Ghana, the jute sacks were originally used to transport the country's top export cocoa, charcoal, and other goods, bearing the marks of trade, labor, and global circulation. Through a process of exchange, Mahama acquired the sacks from markets and workers, embedding in them a layered social memory of use, value, and negotiation. In Mahama's work, the sacks are transformed through community-based processes of stitching them together into monumental tapestries that drape buildings and public structures. Mahama has covered significant sites with his jute sack tapestries, referred to as Occupations, including Class and Identity at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi (2010); Kumasi Railway Station and KUNST Museum (2013); sites in Accra (2013); the Corderie and Arsenale in Venice for Out of Bounds (2014 – 15) during the 56th Venice Biennale; the National Theatre of Ghana in Malam Dodoo National Theatre (2016); Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen with Nyhavn's Kpalang (2016); the Former Food Distribution Corporation in Accra with Exchange-Exchanger (2016); the atrium of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art with Fracture (2016); the Norval Foundation in Cape Town with Labour of Many (2019); and London's Barbican Centre with Purple Hibiscus (2024). His tapestries have also featured as centrepieces in markets in Accra, Kawokudi in Accra, Documenta 14 in Kassel, Germany (2017), and the Saatchi Gallery in London in 2014 and 2015. At the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015, Mahama gained international recognition with his large-scale installation Out of Bounds, in which he wrapped two prominent walls of the Arsenale with stitched jute sacks. The sacks, commonly used to transport cocoa beans, one of Ghana's biggest exports, were printed with names of different traders, documenting the multiple hands that the items had passed through before Mahama used them for this work. The work "explored how labour and exchange are intertwined with the postcolonial condition in the artist’s home country of Ghana." Curated by Okwui Enwezor, the installation marked a turning point in Mahama's career, attracting significant critical attention. It was during the Biennale that Mahama met Susan May, artistic director at White Cube, which began representing him shortly thereafter. Frieze named the work No.22 of "The 25 Best Works of the 21st Century". At Documenta 14, held in Athens and Kassel in 2017, Mahama presented two major site-specific installations that engaged public architecture through material and memory: • Check Point Prosfygika (Athens, Syntagma Square and Prosfygika housing complex) involved sewing hundreds of discarded charcoal sacks imported, worn, and stamped with trade markings into expansive textile surfaces that covered public plazas. The collaborative performance, involving migrants and local residents, emphasized their labor and communal histories while addressing global trade networks and economic precarity. • Check Point Sekondi Loco. 1901–2030 (Kassel, Torwache) featured the wrapping of Kassel's historic gatehouse in jute sacks, scrap metal, tarpaulins, metal tags, and leather from a Henschel locomotive. The work interrogated the politics of infrastructural spaces and transformed the site into a critical commentary on capitalist circulation and colonial-era trade commodities. In 2019, as part of Frieze Sculpture in New York, Mahama unveiled his first large-scale public installation in the city by replacing 50 of the 192 UN flags at Rockefeller Center with hand-stitched jute flags made in Ghana. In 2019, Mahama represented Ghana in its first-ever national pavilion at the Venice Biennale titled Ghana Freedom. He was the youngest artist featured. His installation, A Straight Line Through the Carcass of History 1649, curated by Nana Oforiatta Ayim and designed by architect David Adjaye, used colonial-era railway components, wooden grills, and other salvaged materials to explore Ghana's post-independence history. The work questioned narratives of liberation and progress, presenting decaying industrial infrastructure as a metaphor for unrealized political and social transformation. Also in 2019, Mahama presented Parliament of Ghosts at the Manchester International Festival. Constructed from 120 second-hand train seats arranged to resemble Ghana's Parliament, along with abandoned railway parts, train carriages, and colonial-era station furniture, the installation formed a civic space reflecting on the ambitions and failures of Ghana's post-independence era. He said at the time: "Everything here bears the residue of history. My interest comes from the workers who made these seats and the people who used these trains to get to work. Their labour haunts the seats." The work has since been permanently installed at Mahama's Red Clay campus in Tamale, where it functions as a cultural assembly hall, a site for public discourse, and a platform for education and research. In 2023, Mahama was appointed artistic director of the 35th Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts, becoming the first African artist to lead the historic Slovenian exhibition. Under the theme From the Void Came Gifts of the Cosmos, Mahama collaborated with Exit Frame Collective, Alicia Knock, Selom Koffi Kudjie, Inga Lāce, Beya Othmani, and Patrick Nii Okanta to explore anti-colonial and anti-imperial struggles through the medium of printmaking. The project drew inspiration from Ghana's post-independence infrastructure and sought to revive historical connections between Ghana and Slovenia. The biennale featured new commissions and existing works by artists and collectives including Otobong Nkanga, Mireille Kaboré, and the Kuhle Collective. Mahama is represented by White Cube and APALAZZOGALLERY.

Using proceeds from his first major international exhibition at Saatchi Gallery in London, Mahama purchased a 40,000-square-meter plot of land near Tamale, Ghana, to address the lack of formal arts education in the region. Since 2014, he has developed three major institutions, transforming it into a cultural campus that integrates art, education, and community development. The campus welcomes more than 100,000 visitors a year, and functions as an ongoing and evolving cultural project that reflects Mahama's artistic practice and commitment to sustainable growth. Proceeds generated through this model are continually reinvested into the campus's long-term development. Curator Azu Nwagbogu wrote in ArtReview that Mahama "seeks to leverage his position and renown to help remediate present conditions in Ghana by building infrastructure in order to enable long-term collaborations between citizens and institutions; between artists, curators and cultural producers across the continent and in diaspora through institution-building towards a fundamentally engaged and integrated methodology of art practice for the benefit of society at large."

Opened in March 2019, SCCA Tamale is a 900-square-metre multidisciplinary art space and research hub dedicated to contemporary African and diasporic art. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Selom Kudjle, it functions as both a 15-room residency and exhibition venue, fostering critical engagement and public dialogue. Notable exhibitions include: • Galle Winston Kofi Dawson: In Pursuit of Something 'Beautiful', Perhaps…, March 15 – 15 August 2019 The inaugural exhibition at SCCA Tamale was a retrospective celebrating Ghanaian modernist Galle Winston Kofi Dawson's multifaceted body of work, curated by Bernard Akoi-Jackson. • Akutia: Blindfolding the Sun and the Poetics of Peace, 4 September 2020 – 7 March 2021 A retrospective of Ghanaian artist Agyeman Ossei (Dota), showcasing works inspired by Asante culture, philosophy, and folk music, presented in collaboration with Red Clay. • A Diagnosis of Time: Unlearn What You Have Learned, April 30 – 3 November 2021 A collaborative exhibition with ARoS Aarhus Art Museum and the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board, examining the concept of time through diverse media including paintings, sculptures, and cultural objects. • Existing Otherwise: The Future of Coexistence, January 14 – 30 April 2022 A hybrid curatorial project featuring artists such as Zanele Muholi, Ato Jackson, and Selom Kudjie, exploring alternative narratives and coexistence in post-pandemic societies. • Dig Where You Stand, September 2 – 9 October 2022 Curated by Azu Nwagbogu and presented by the African Artists' Foundation, this exhibition investigated regenerative artistic practices and their potential to challenge extractive economic systems.

Red Clay Studio is an art and cultural institution founded in 2020 in Janna Kpeŋŋ, near Tamale, Ghana. It serves as Mahama's studio and as a hybrid learning space built from locally sourced red clay bricks. The site's artistic director is Esinam Damalie. Red Clay Studio includes warehouses, exhibition halls, outdoor gathering spaces, and repurposed structures such as grounded British colonial-era train carriages and six Soviet-era aircraft converted into libraries, cinema rooms, and classrooms for local children. Notably, a Star Bow aircraft was transported from Accra to Tamale in December 2019, crossing the Volta River, and now serves as an educational space on site. A key permanent installation is Parliament of Ghosts, originally shown in Manchester in 2019 and now reinstalled at Red Clay Studio. This chamber-like structure reimagines political power and colonial architecture, inviting reflection and dialogue. With 2000 school children visiting a week, Red Clay Studio's programming includes free educational workshops in robotics, solar energy, drone piloting, coding, and interdisciplinary creative activities. The institution's mission reflects Mahama's commitment to ensuring that access to culture, critical thinking, and technical skills is not limited by geography.

On February 18th, 2026, repairs on a vintage train in Ibrahim Mahama's Red Clay Studio resulted in a fire. The train, which had been acquired two years before the incident, was engulfed by the fire, destroying one of the most difficult pieces acquired by the artist.

Nkrumah Voli-ni is an educational and cultural space founded in 2022. The artistic director is Ernest Sarkitey. It was named after an abandoned grain silo complex in Tamale, Ghana. The name connects directly to Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's first president and a key figure in the country's independence movement. The silos date back to the Nkrumah era (1957–1966) and were part of ambitious state-driven industrial and agricultural modernization projects. They were built to store and distribute grain to support national food security and rural development, symbolizing Nkrumah's vision of economic self-reliance and collective infrastructure for the newly independent nation. Over time, many of these silos fell into disuse and decay. By transforming this abandoned site into an educational and artistic space, Mahama preserves a piece of local industrial history but also critiques the unrealized promises and failures of modernist development projects, turning a monument of past ambition into a platform for future learning, creativity, and community dialogue. During the restoration of the silo, Mahama discovered a large colony of bats living in the rafters. Rather than displace them, he chose to preserve their habitat, integrating them as co-inhabitants of the space. This gesture informed several works, including his 2021 exhibition Lazarus at White Cube, where suspended sculptures resembling bats were crafted from oil-drenched tarpaulin and steel rebar. In his 2020–2021 exhibition As the void, vali and voli at APALAZZOGALLERY, Mahama incorporated images of bats into large-scale works that layered archival receipts, photographs, and architectural motifs from Ghana. Works such as Siiko and Leno used the bat as both ecological and symbolic figure, evoking themes of resilience, care, and shared habitation across species and histories.

2025 • Zilijifa, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna 2024 • A Spell of Good Things, White Cube, New York • Songs About Roses, Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh • Rubber Soul, Mönchehaus Museum Goslar, Germany • IF THESE ARE THE THINGS, APALAZZOGALLERY, Brescia, Italy • Purple Hibiscus, Barbican Centre, London 2023 • TRANSFER(S), Kunsthalle Osnabrück, Germany 2022 • Garden of Scars, Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, Netherlands • VOLI-NI, Eataly Art House (E.ART.H), Verona, Italy • The Memory of Love, FRAC des Pays de la Loire, Nantes, France • The Memory of Love, MASSIMODECARLO Pièce Unique, Paris, France • Half of a Yellow Sun, White Cube, Hong Kong 2021 • Lazarus, White Cube Bermondsey, London, UK • As the Void, Vali and Voli, APALAZZOGALLERY, Brescia, Italy • VANISHING POINTS. 2014–2020, Reiter Galleries, Leipzig, Germany • 57 Forms of Liberty, The High Line, New York, USA • Leaves of Grass. 2012–2021, Fisk University, Little Theater, Nashville, TN, USA 2020 • In-Between the World and Dreams, University of Michigan Museum of Art, USA • LETTERS FROM THE VOID, White Cube Online 2019 • Living Grains, Fondazione Giuliani, Rome, Italy • Parliament of Ghosts, The Whitworth, University of Manchester, UK • Labour of Many, Norval Foundation, Steenberg, Cape Town, South Africa • A Friend, Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Caselli Daziari, Porta Venezia – Piazza Guglielmo Oberdan, Milan, Italy 2018 • 0.10 Reloaded, Avantgarde 2018, Galerie Sabine Knust, Munich, Germany • Kunst & Kohle: Coal Market, Schloss Strünkede, Emschertal-Museum Herne, Stadtische Galerie, Germany • A Straight Line Through the Carcass of History, 1918–1945, daadgalerie, Berlin, Germany • Dal-Baħar Madwarha: A Straight Line Through the Carcass of History, Pixkerija, Valletta, Malta • In Dependence, APALAZZOGALLERY, Brescia, Italy • On Monumental Silences, Extra City Kunsthal, Antwerp, Belgium 2017 • Non-Orientable Nkansa, Miami Design District, Miami, USA • Fragments, White Cube, Bermondsey, London, UK 2016 • Fracture, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel • Food Distribution Corporation, Artist's Rooms at K21 Ständehaus, Düsseldorf, Germany 2015 • APALAZZOGALLERY (with Edson Chagas), Brescia, Italy 2014 • Ellis King Gallery, Dublin, Ireland 2013 • Kawokudi, Accra, Ghana • Nima, Accra, Ghana • Adum, Railway Station, Kumasi, Ghana • Jute, What Is Art?, K.N.U.S.T Museum, Kumasi, Ghana • Cannon Wax, Jamestown, Accra, Ghana 2012 • Sisala Coal Market, Newtown, Accra, Ghana • Trading Identities, MFA Block, Kumasi, Ghana 2011 • The Colonized Body, Kokomlemle, Accra, Ghana 2010 • Class and Identity, K.N.U.S.T, Kumasi, Ghana 2009 • Purity? Cultures of Display, Bomso, Kumasi, Ghana • Cannon Wax, Jamestown, Accra, Ghana

2024 • Imagining Black Diasporas: 21st Century Art and Poetics, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California • Janus, Palazzo Diedo Berggruen Arts & Culture, Venice • Garden of Scars, Malta Biennale, Malta and Gozo, Republic of Malta • In the Presence of Absence, Desert X AlUla, Saudi Arabia • REFUGE, Lagos Biennial, Nigeria 2023 • In Brilliant Light, Museum Volkenkunde, Leiden, Germany • Chicago Architecture Biennial, Illinois • 35th Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil • Threads, Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol, UK • Before Tomorrow, 30 years of Astrup Fearnley Museet, Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo • Long-distance Friendships, Kaunas Biennial, Lithuania • O Quilombisimo: Of Resisting and Insisting. Of Flight as Fight. Of Other Democratic Egalitarian Political Philosophies, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin • Parliament of Ghosts, 18th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Italy • The Educational Web, Kuntervein Hamburg, Germany • Thinking Historically in the Present, Sharjah Biennial 15, United Arab Emirates 2022 • Burning At The Edges, Longlati Foundation, Shanghai • Contextile 2022, 6th Contemporary Textile Biennial, Guimarães, Portugal • Revival: Materials and Monumental Forms, ICA Watershed, Boston, USA • Christen Sveaas Art Foundation: The Unseen selected by Hurvin Anderson, Whitechapel Gallery, London • Temporary Atlas: Cartographies of the Self in the Art of Today, Treviso Contemporanea, Italy 2021 • Narrow Gate of the Here-and-Now: Social Fabric, IMMA, Dublin • WASTE X AGE: What can design do?, Design Museum, London • Afro-Atlantic Histories, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (2022); Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California (2023); Dallas Museum of Art, Texas (2023) • Fourth Plinth Shortlist, National Gallery, London • Congoville, Middelheim Museum, Antwerp • Force Times Distance - On Labour and its Sonic Ecologies, Sonsbeek Biennale, The Netherlands 2020 • (Group) Global(e) Résistance, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France • NIRIN, Artspace and Cockatoo Island, 22nd Biennale of Sydney, Australia • Tomorrow, There Will Be More of Us, Stellenbosch Triennale, Cape Town 2019 • Tirana Patience, National Gallery of Arts, Tirana, Albania • Future Genealogies, Tales From The Equatorial Line, 6th Lubumbashi Biennale, Democratic Republic of the Congo • Working Labor, SAIC Sullivan Galleries, Chicago, US • Ghana Freedom, Ghana Pavilion, Arsenale, 58th Venice Biennale, Italy • UNTITLED, Frieze Sculpture, Rockefeller Center, New York, US • Eldorama, Tripostal, Lille, France • Kubatana, Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium, Vestfossen, Norway • Dirty Protest: Selections from the Hammer Contemporary Collection, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, US • Material Insanity, Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden (MACAAL), Marrakech, Morocco 2018 • Torre Matarazzo, Sao Paulo, Brazil • Radical Histories, 2012–2018, Nuit Blanche, Toronto, Canada • Memory Palace, White Cube, London, UK • 0.10 RELOADED, Avantgarde 2018, Galerie Sabine Knust, Munich • Time is the Game of Man, European ArtEast Foundation, Castello di Brolio, Gaiole In Chianti, Italy • Histórias Afro Atlânticas, MASP Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, São Paulo, Brazil • Non-Orientable Nkansa, Art Basel Unlimited, Basel, Switzerland • No Time For Caution 1966, 2014–2018, La Biennale de l'Art africain contemporain: DAK'ART, Dakar, Senegal • Pulling at Threads: the Woven Object in Contemporary Art, The Norval Foundation Art Gallery, Cape Town • EX AFRICA, Centro Cultural Banco de Brasil, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro; Brasilia • Triângulo do Atlântico, 11ª Bienal de Artes Visuais do Mercosul, Porto Alegre, Brazil 2017 • Manipulate the World, Moderna Museet, Stockholm • EX AFRICA, Centro Cultural Banco de Brasil, Belo Horizonte, Brazil • Documenta 14, Kassel, Germany and Athens • Future Generation Art Prize at Venice, Palazzo Contarini Polignac, Event of the 57th Venice Biennale (touring exhibition) • Future Generation Art Prize, PinchukArtCentre, Kyiv, Ukraine • When the Heavens Meet the Earth, Selected Works from the Robert Devereux Sina Jina Collection of Contemporary Art, The Heong Gallery at Downing College, Cambridge, UK 2016 • Cornfields in Accra, Museum of Science and Technology, Accra, Ghana • An Age of Our Own Making, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen 2015 • Material Effects, Eli and Edythe Broad Museum, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan • The Gown Must Go To Town, Museum of Science and Technology, Accra, Ghana • All the World's Futures, Arsenale, 56th Venice Biennale, Italy • Broken English, Tyburn Gallery, London • Panagaea II, Saatchi Gallery, London • Artist's Rooms, K21, Düsseldorf 2014 • Pangaea New Art from Africa and Latin America, Saatchi Gallery, London • Masked and Unmasked, Dak'Art OFF, Saint Louis, Senegal 2011 • Illumination, Installation, K.N.U.S.T Museum, Kumasi, Ghana 2009 • Hatching Out, K.N.U.S.T Museum, Kumasi, Ghana

In 2013, Ibrahim Mahama became involved in a legal dispute with art dealer Stefan Simchowitz and gallerist Jonathan Ellis King. The case concerned the unauthorized alteration and sale of Mahama's jute sack works. Mahama alleged the dealers had modified and sold the works without his consent, violating his moral rights under the Visual Artists Rights Act. The dealers claimed they had an agreement to produce and sell derivative pieces. The parties reached a confidential settlement in 2016.

On Wednesday February 8, 2026, fire engulfed one of Ibrahim's heritage train he owns. The train was part of Ghana’s oldest railway stock, which is no longer in operation, and had been acquired by Ibrahim as part of his preservation efforts towards relics and heritage artifacts.

Mahama resides in Ghana and is married to Khadija Yussif Iddi.