Ibrahim Mahama To Open Ambitious Paris Exhibition, Rebuilding Ghana Glass Factory

(MENAFN- USA Art News) Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama will launch his most ambitious exhibition,“The Harvest Season,” at the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain in Paris, taking over the entire building starting next week. Mahama views the artist as a“vessel” for collective work, regularly acknowledging his collaborators, including market women, weavers, craftsmen, studio assistants, railway workers, curators, professors, and fellow artists.

Mahama, who topped the ArtReview Power 100 list in 2025 and received an Art Basel Gold Award that year, also won the 2026 Arnold Bode prize. He was recently named a chevalier of the French government's Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, an honor bestowed in Ghana by Diarra Dime Labille, France's Ambassador to the West African country.“We live and work in a community and nobody is an island by themselves. I built my practice based on the idea of collectivity and working with different collaborators,” Mahama told ARTnews.

His acclaimed work, often featuring worn-out jute sacks, gained international recognition with an appearance in Okwui Enwezor's 2015 Venice Biennale. Proceeds from Mahama's sales fund institutions he founded in Ghana, such as the Tamale-based Red Clay Studio and the Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art. He also revitalizes abandoned buildings, factories, and airplanes into art and educational spaces, exemplified by Nkrumah Voli-ni in Tamale. These initiatives, which he calls a“lifetime work,” aim to infuse new life into collected materials, archives, industrial heritage, and national history. His collaborative approach extends internationally, including work with Kenyan British artist Michael Armitage and his Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute.

The Paris exhibition will feature a new iteration of his ongoing installation Parliament of Ghosts, which premiered in 2019 and includes discarded train seats, railway sleepers, school furniture, jute sacks, and government archives. This version will incorporate approximately 200 collected and restored royal stools from the Asante Empire. Mahama intends this to challenge common museum practices where such stools, often looted, are displayed in glass cases. At the Fondation Cartier, visitors will have unrestricted access, recontextualizing these objects as“living” items used for their original purpose. He hopes this will invert discussions around the return of African objects, asking what happens when these stools are presented in Europe as active cultural artifacts rather than static museum exhibits, thereby bringing out their“ghosts [and] histories” and fostering new conversations.

A new project for the exhibition, titled Things Fall Apart after Chinua Achebe's 1958 novel, focuses on the Aboso Glass Factory. Established in 1966 by Ghana's first president, Kwame Nkrumah, as part of national industrialization efforts before his overthrow, the abandoned plant was purchased by Mahama about two years ago with production funds from Fondation Cartier. The Paris installation represents only a small component of this project, as the glass factory is being rebuilt in spaces like the Red Clay Studio in Tamale and a British-era colonial building. After the exhibition closes, the factory will return to Ghana for a permanent installation in Kumasi, where Mahama plans to establish a new institution. He is also collaborating with cinema owners and local craftsmen to explore rebuilding abandoned cinemas in Ghana.

The exhibition will also showcase works on the Ghanaian railway system and a new textile installation. This textile piece, made from Ghanaian fabrics produced in northern Ghana, truck inner tubes, jute sacks, and found textiles, will hang across the arcades of the Fondation Cartier building's facades. Aby Gaye-Duparc, the exhibition's curator, noted a dialogue between the 1850s building and Mahama's work, which addresses 19th-century Ghanaian history and the links between Europe and West Africa during that period. Gaye-Duparc emphasized that Mahama's practice has two sides: the visible installations and videos, and the foundational work in Tamale that builds artistic infrastructure and institutions, expanding access to the arts for previously underserved communities.

In keeping with Mahama's collaborative ethos, the Paris exhibition will feature works by other artists and collectives, including James Barnor, Gideon Appah, CATPC (Cercle d'Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise), Tjaša Rener, Postbox Ghana, Courage Dzidula Kpodo, and Mahama's mentor, Dorothy Akpene Amenuke. Architect Kpodo will present work on modernism, challenging the focus on concrete tropical modernist buildings often constructed by foreigners in Ghanaian cities. His central piece will be a wall reconstruction made from laterite sourced from a building he owns in Gyampo, in the Eastern Region, characteristic of vernacular architecture. The installation will also include about 100 postcards by the Postbox Ghana collective, depicting tropical modernist architectural buildings in cities such as Accra, Kumasi, and Takoradi. Kpodo described Mahama as someone who“makes space within his own abilities and means for people that he thinks are doing interesting, important work.”

This exhibition marks one of Mahama's first major shows since he was attacked earlier this year by a special operations unit of the Ghana Police Service in Tamale. Mahama expressed being“overwhelmed” by the community support he received during the aftermath, calling it“fantastic.”

Source: ARTnews

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