Ibrahim Mahama grew up in Tamale, north Ghana, where he was in daily contact with objects and materials that developed a double meaning for him. His artwork began as a collage and patchwork of items surrounding his daily life, without being explicitly political.<\/p>\n
Out of his own lived experiences he re-contextualises spaces and working processes, capturing the body and skin<\/em> of functional tools.<\/p>\n From a\u00a0point of crisis <\/em>Ibrahim starts and develops his artwork.<\/p>\n Used jute sacks sewn together in Ibrahim’s artwork are the skin<\/em>, containing Ghana’s main export commodity, cocoa beans. Consumed and re-purposed for carrying rice and other commodities across borders, their final use is usually to transport charcoal.<\/p>\n The artist, however, involving local collaborators, revives these in creative re-composition. He began by covering some of his country’s public buildings, which are often out of sympathy with the surrounding lives and spaces.<\/p>\n Now his works cover walls and palaces all over the world, and bring together local collaborators from different cities. The creative process itself is part of this negotiation of spaces,<\/em> with the collaborators jointly sewing every sack, reviving a use for them after carrying charcoal.<\/p>\n Global transactions and capitalist structures are an important reference, but Ibrahim Mahama has a greater motivation: he intersects occupation and coexistence in creating a new language of objects and signs, revealing their own reasons and story.<\/p>\n