Ibrahim Mahama

Ibrahim Mahama (born 1987 in Tamale, Ghana) is a Ghanaian multidisciplinary artist whose monumental installations, sculptures, textile works, photography, video, architectural interventions, and archival projects examine labor, colonialism, global trade, migration, industrialization, economic inequality, and the social histories embedded within materials. Working across Accra, Kumasi, and Tamale, Mahama is particularly known for transforming used jute sacks, railway components, shoemaker boxes, sewing machines, colonial-era school furniture, maps, textiles, and other discarded objects into expansive environments that reveal the human labor and economic systems through which those materials have circulated. His practice has expanded considerably beyond jute. Works such as Parliament of Ghosts repurpose abandoned materials from Ghana’s colonial railway system to consider the promises and failures of post-independence industrialization, while projects involving discarded sewing machines, hospital stretchers, school desks, blackboards, metal headpans, and industrial remnants examine how political and economic histories persist through objects. Mahama describes this process as a kind of “time travel,” redirecting materials associated with failed colonial and postcolonial projects toward new social possibilities. His 2025 exhibition Zilijifa at Kunsthalle Wien, for example, placed a full-size locomotive in relation to thousands of worn headpans and X-ray images documenting spinal damage associated with carrying loads, connecting infrastructure directly to the bodies whose labor sustains it.  Mahama earned a BFA in Painting from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in 2010, an MFA in Painting and Sculpture in 2013, and a PhD in Fine Art from KNUST in 2015. Alongside his international exhibition practice, he has redirected substantial resources from his art career toward building cultural infrastructure in northern Ghana. He founded the Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art (SCCA) in Tamale in 2019, Red Clay Studio in nearby Janna Kpeŋŋ in 2020, and Nkrumah Volini in 2021, creating spaces devoted to exhibitions, archives, education, experimentation, and community-based learning. Mahama has exhibited at the Venice Biennale, documenta 14, Sharjah Biennial, Bienal de São Paulo, Biennale of Sydney, Centre Pompidou, Barbican Centre, Kunsthalle Wien, Fruitmarket, Norval Foundation, High Line, and numerous other institutions internationally. His recent honors include the 2026 Arnold Bode Prize, 2025 Art Basel Gold Award, 2024 inaugural Sam Gilliam Award, 2021 Pino Pascali Award, and 2020 Prince Claus Award. In 2025 he became the first African artist to rank number one on ArtReview’s Power 100 list. In 2026, his projects include The God of Small Things at Art Basel, Labyrinths at MAPS Museum in Denmark, A Shea Garden in Venice, and the forthcoming major Fondation Cartier exhibition The Harvest Season in Paris.