Ibrahim Mahama (born 1987 in Tamale, Ghana) is a Ghanaian contemporary artist known for his large-scale installations, sculptures and architectural interventions that explore global trade, commodification, labor, economic inequality, migration, and the socio-political legacies of colonialism in Africa. Mahama transforms everyday materials, such as jute sacks used in commodity exchange and abandoned infrastructure, into works that engage with collective memory and historical narratives.

Mahama has exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Biennale, Kochi-Muziris Biennale and Documenta, and his work is held in public collections worldwide, including the Centre Pompidou, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Mahama is the founder of the Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art (SCCA), Red Clay Studio, and Nkrumah Voli-ni in Tamale, which serve as platforms for exhibitions, research, and community-based learning. 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. He was awarded Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2026.

Ibrahim Mahama is 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.

Early life and education 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.

Artistic practice Mahama describes his artistic practice as a form of "time travel", using discarded materials such as jute sacks, train parts, shoe-shine boxes, sewing machines, school desks and bureaucratic records to reimagine narratives of postcolonial identity, economic failure, and social transformation. He has said that "art reflects a collective history. It is a response to histories and specific spaces, such as buildings. That an abandoned project from an earlier century can inspire creativity in the current century, presents a hugely effective potential for the future."

Central to his work is "trying to find out what art is" and the deconstruction of historical contexts marked by crisis or collapse, through which he excavates the generative and transformative possibilities that emerge from such moments. He has said "I use crisis and failure as the primary material in my work to be able to produce and develop new language and aesthetics." His large-scale installations, created in collaboration with artisans, technicians, traders, and local communities, engage themes of labor, migration, globalization, economic exchange, and resilience.

Documentation through photography, sound, oral histories, and archives plays a vital role in preserving and activating the social and material histories embedded in his practice. Mahama often incorporates architecture as a conceptual and material element, describing his approach as "We never really think about how a building is constructed, the labor that goes into it, and where the capital comes from. So this is where my work comes in. I use architecture as a tool to reorganize our thinking."

Education, research, and cultural infrastructure are central to Mahama's expanded practice. Through his institutions in Kumasi and Tamale; the Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art (SCCA), Red Clay, and Nkrumah Volini, he supports experimental pedagogy, local knowledge production, and intergenerational learning. These spaces serve as schools, studios, libraries, archives, and exhibition venues. With the hope that the access will allow schoolchildren to realise "the transformative quality of art." They enable new ways of thinking about art's role in society and offer models for building cultural ecosystems from within. He has said "It's very important not to leave Ghana. You want to feel 30 years from now that you were part of the struggle, that you have helped to build this country."

In 2024, Mahama was the subject of the short documentary Dear Home of Scars, directed by Marina Meijer as part of the Ammodo Docs series, which documents aspects of his artistic practice in Ghana.

Mahama has participated in several artist residencies, including the DAAD Berliner Künstlerprogramm in Berlin and Occupy Atopos in Athens (2017–2018), Gasworks in London (2013), Atelierhaus Hilmsen in Germany (2012), and multiple residencies at OFKOB (Occupy Farmstead Kokobeng) in Ofoase Kokobeng, Ghana (2013, 2014, 2015), a self-initiated project space focused on community, agriculture, and experimental art practice. Mahama also lectures widely at institutions such as Pratt Institute, contributing to global conversations on contemporary African art, decolonial theory, and socially engaged practice.

Mahama has referenced Robert Rauschenberg's approach to assemblage, Robert Smithson's engagement with landscape and peripheral spaces, along the Arte Povera movement and African contemporaries such as Romuald Hazoumé and El Anatsui, known for their innovative use of found materials to address cultural and historical themes, as inspiration.

Mahama's work takes inspiration from postcolonial literature and music, including Karl Marx's Das Kapital (1867), Walter Benjamin's essay The Author as Producer (1934), Chinua Achebe's No Longer at Ease (1960), Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), and Maurizio Lazzarato's The Making of the Indebted Man (2012), as well as the music of Fela Kuti. Several of his artworks and exhibitions take their titles from African literature, including; A Spell of Good Things (2024, White Cube New York) references the novel by Nigerian writer Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, Fragments (2017, White Cube London) draws from the novel by Ghanaian author Ayi Kwei Armah, while Purple Hibiscus (2023–24, Barbican Centre, London) and Half of a Yellow Sun (2022, White Cube Hong Kong) is titled after Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novels.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Mahama contributed to Designbooms "Messages of Hope" series with cultural figures. He shared images from Red Clay studio in Tamale, accompanied by the reflection: "The promises of the present can start with ghosts from both the future and past. Ghosts are an embodiment of failed revolutions and unrealized futures, which need to be used as a starting point for new conversations within this century and beyond. Every life form is a gift."

Career

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".