Ibrahim Mahama

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Ibrahim Mahama (* 1987 in Tamale , Ghana ) is a Ghanaian concept , object , action and performance artist . He works out the connections between space and politics.

Life and education

Ibrahim Mahama attended the Art School in Kumasi . There he initially worked conventionally and opened up Robert Rauschenberg's collage-like painting. As an art student, Mahama attended documenta 13 in 2012 . The impressions of the first visit to a world art exhibition led to the fact that he began to radically change his own work. The documenta 13 animated Mahama to work with his own body and to use plaster of paris to remove his body shapes. Jute sacks as a material served him as a second skin. In 2017 he received a DaaD scholarship. Ibrahim Mahama is cand. Phil. Dr. on the topic of redefinition of artistic work within the own framework at the University of Kumasi.

Ibrahim Mahama lives in Berlin .

Artistic work

Mahama first collects jute sacks and sews them together with his employees to make jute sculptures. The jute collage takes the shape of the building. Ibrahim Mahama covered buildings such as the National Theater in Accra , museums , residences and ministries in Accra and parts of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi. Mahama uses used jute sacks for his building wraps, which he receives in exchange for new ones. The bags made in Asia are sold globally. Jute is used in West Africa to make curtains, traditional costumes and decorations. In Ghana, jute sacks are used to pack and transport cocoa , coffee , rice , beans and charcoal . The tattered sacks, damaged by signs of use by the workers, are a reminder of their production and previous use. The handling of the sacks by workers leaves behind individual traces in the production life cycle, starting with the weaving of the fabric, packing, loading and transport, such as sweat, contamination and transport descriptions. The memory of the traces of use in this exchange transaction is the basis of the exchange for Mahama. For Mahama, the jute sacks symbolize the effects of world trade . For him, due to their traces of use, they are a forensic clue in his search for manifestations of global capitalist economics. In the context of cartography , a new perception of public space emerges.

Contribution to Documenta 14, Athens

In Athens he put on a performance in Syntagma Square below the Greek Parliament . He showed a patchwork blanket that he had students, volunteers and refugees sew together. Other parts of the jute ceiling were made in front of the university's polytechnic, where student unrest broke out in the 1970s, and in a disused marble quarry near Athens, where parts of the Acropolis were once cut .

Contribution to Documenta 14, Kassel

For documenta 14, Ibrahim Mahama covered the Kassel gate guard designed by Heinrich Christoph Jussow , in which the Grimm brothers temporarily lived. His collage Check Point Sekondi Loco 1901-2030. 2017-2017 (2016-2017) consists of coal sacks, scrap metal, tarpaulin, metal tags and the leather from the inside of a Henschel locomotive. The collage was sewn together in the Henschel halls. There he led the performance Check Point Sekondi Loco 1901-2030. 2016-2017 (2017) .

Quote

Ibrahim Mahama describes his work as follows:

"I'm interested in how crisis and failure are absorbed in the material, the relationship to global transactions and how capitalist structures work."

- From: Nicola Kuhn The Politics of the Jute Sack; What remains of Documenta 14, which disappoints many? For example the art of Ibrahim Mahama, who is now working in Berlin : Der Tagesspiegel from July 24, 2017

Exhibitions

  • 2017: White Cube Gallery, London
  • 2017: Pinchuk Art Center, Kiev
  • 2017: Palazzo Contarini Polignac, Venice
  • 2017: documents 14, Athens, Kassel

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung: Ibrahim Mahama. Documenta 14, accessed on September 22, 2017 .
  2. ↑ Der Tagesspiegel from July 24, 2017 - Article at Nexis, accessed on September 21, 2017 from the Tagesspiegel
personal data
SURNAME Mahama, Ibrahim
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Ghanaian concept artist
DATE OF BIRTH 1987
PLACE OF BIRTH Tamale ( Ghana )