Bio

Ibrahim Mahama (born in 1987) is a Ghanian author and an artist of monumental installations. He obtained a Master of Fine Arts in Painting and Sculpture in 2013 and a Bachelor’s in Fine Arts in Painting in 2010 at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana. In his installations and wall-based works, Ibrahim Mahama considers the ways in which capital and labor are expressed in common materials. Included in the 2015 Venice Biennale, Mahama is best known for his use of jute sacks, cloth bags once used to carry cocoa and now employed as vessels for coal. Each sack is inscribed with names and embellished with regional patterned fabrics. “The coal sacks began as an extension of how the body could be looked at. It contains all these system and makings of original owners, which have been transferred from the bodies creating a link between the two forms,” the artist has said. Mahama’s immersive installations, which are installed in both art spaces and public markets, draw attention to the global transportation of goods across borders.

He was the youngest artist featured in the Ghana Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale. His work was shown during the 56th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale in Italy All The World’s Futures curated by Okwui Enwezor in 2015. 

 As part of his contribution to the development of Africa through art, Mahama was named the 73rd most influential African by theafricareport.com in the list of 100 most influential Africans 2019/2020. 

Ibrahim Mahama: In-Between the World and Dreams