Lecture: Ibrahim Mahama

At the same time as his teaching semester in Artistic Production, at the faculty of Design and Art, Museion has organized a brief artist’s residency at its Studio House, that will culminate on 26 May at 7.00pm with a keynote lecture that is open to the public. This meeting will be an opportunity to present Mahama’s art to the Museion public, and university students, and, in particular, his latest project that focuses on his hometown of Tamale in Ghana.

Here, in 2019, the artist founded his Savannah Center for Contemporary Art (SCCA), a location that is a research center, an exhibition hall and an artist’s residency combining contemporary art, experimentation and social engagement projects. Mahama uses the transformation of materials to explore themes of commodity, migration, globalization and economic exchange. His large-scale installations often employ materials recovered from urban environments, such as remnants of wood, or jute sacks which are stitched together and draped over architectural structures. The process of negotiation and exchange by which Mahama obtains the materials he uses in his projects plays a significant role in his work.