Ibrahim Mahama is a Ghanaian contemporary artist and founder of the Savanah Center for Contemporary Art in Tamale, his hometown. He is represented by White Cube gallery in London His work has been, among other venues, at Documenta14 in 2017 and the Venice Biennale in 2015, 2017, and 2019. “A Straight Line Through the Carcass of History” is part of the Ghana Pavilion in Venice this year, designed by David Adjaye and including work by John Akomfrah and El Anatsui.
Mahama explores the poetics of labor and the spectral politics of global trade, as engraved in the failure, decay, rupture, and resilience of materials and structures. With the collaboration of an ever-expanding network of people, he has created large scale public interventions sewing together worn jute sack formerly used to extract cocoa and charcoal from Ghana. Occupying spaces and buildings as core elements of his artworks, he digs into defunct infrastructures still informing every day practices to set the ground for lasting social change.
This event is co-organized by the registered student organization Art + Scholarship in Theory and Practice, the Art History Department, and the Department of Design Studies.
For more information: https://whitecube.com/artists/artist/ibrahim_mahama
