The world of contemporary art has witnessed a seismic shift, marking a historic moment as Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama claims the coveted number one spot on the ArtReview Power 100 list for 2025, becoming the first artist from the African continent to ever lead the prestigious annual ranking. This unprecedented achievement is not merely an individual accolade, but a powerful affirmation of Africa’s rising cultural gravity and a recognition of a new, transformative model of artistic influence that extends far beyond the studio and gallery walls. Mahama’s ascent from number 14 in the previous year to the pinnacle is a clear signal that his monumental, material-driven practice—paired with his commitment to building autonomous cultural infrastructure in his home country—has fundamentally reshaped global artistic discourse and institutional thinking. The ArtReview Power 100, compiled by an international panel of experts, judges influence based on impact over the past year, reflecting who and what has shaped the direction and conversation of contemporary art worldwide, and this year, the answer is unequivocally Ibrahim Mahama.
This historic placement reflects a pivotal moment where the global art community acknowledges that cultural impact is now measured not just by museum shows and auction results, but by an artist’s ability to foster real, sustainable change and establish independent cultural ecosystems outside traditional Western centres. Mahama’s achievement signals a necessary de-centering of the art world map, highlighting the enduring, often overlooked, power embedded in post-colonial critique and material histories. His practice is viewed by critics as a masterclass in re-purposing the relics of failed economic systems—from jute sacks to abandoned silos—and transforming them into sites for collective memory and future-making, a methodology that resonates deeply with contemporary socio-political concerns across the globe. By actively addressing the legacies of post-independence Africa through art, Mahama has established a universal language of critique and hope, making his influence undeniable and truly global.
The Genesis: From Tamale to Transatlantic Recognition
Born in 1987 in Tamale, Ghana, Ibrahim Mahama’s artistic journey is deeply rooted in the socio-economic and architectural landscape of his homeland, an environment that provided the very raw materials and conceptual framework for his signature works. Growing up in a large, extended family environment in Ghana’s northern region, his father, a civil engineer and road contractor, instilled an early, practical fascination with industrial materials and labour systems that would later become the core subjects of his art. This early exposure to the logistics of construction and the flow of goods laid the groundwork for his lifelong preoccupation with the physical embodiment of global capital. He pursued formal artistic training at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting in 2010 and a Master of Fine Arts in Painting and Sculpture in 2013, an academic foundation that deepened his engagement with philosophical and material dimensions of art.
His early artistic experiments evolved swiftly, moving beyond traditional canvas-based methods towards the creation of large-scale, site-specific installations, a practice that gained international momentum and attention. Mahama’s early installations, often composed of stitched-together, repurposed materials, began in local markets and on university buildings, foreshadowing his later monumental architectural interventions. A key turning point came from an observation in 2011 at the Ghana-Burkina Faso border, where he noted the profound role of jute sacks in cross-border trade and their accumulation as waste, prompting deep reflections on economic circulation, labour, and materiality. This epiphany fueled his distinctive artistic language, which employs crisis and failure as primary materials to develop a new language and aesthetic, revealing overlooked narratives of societal voids and abandoned utopian potentials from Ghana’s post-1957 independence era.
The rigorous academic environment at KNUST, particularly within the influential department led by figures like Professor kąrî’kačä Seid’ou, provided a critical theoretical grounding, pushing Mahama and his contemporaries—often referred to as the ‘KNUST school’—to view their art not merely as aesthetic objects but as critical interventions capable of transforming socio-political realities. This formative period at KNUST encouraged an innovative, site-responsive methodology, emphasizing the need for artists to engage directly with the public sphere, moving away from the confines of the traditional white cube gallery space. Mahama’s initial projects, such as covering the university’s library in 2010 with jute sacks in an installation titled Class and Identity, were essentially public performance pieces and acts of civic engagement, challenging passive consumption of art and directly involving local communities in the process of creation and interpretation. The philosophy adopted by Mahama and his peers centered on the belief that art must be an active agent in examining Ghana’s complex post-colonial condition, using materials found in situ—the very detritus and infrastructure of the nation—as primary documentary evidence, a practice he continued with works like Jute, What Is Art? at the KNUST Museum and at the Kumasi Railway Station in 2013.
The foundation laid in Tamale and Kumasi was crucial, as it embedded in Mahama a deep, unwavering commitment to the local context as the source of universal critique. His decision to remain based in Tamale, even as his international acclaim soared, is a deliberate act of resistance against the brain drain that often afflicts the creative sectors in the Global South. This geographical centering allows his work to maintain a raw authenticity and critical edge, constantly informed by the immediate social, political, and material realities of Ghana’s northern region. This rootedness, coupled with his commitment to using materials steeped in the country’s economic history, ensures that his global interventions remain tethered to the specific histories of labour and exchange he aims to illuminate, providing a genuine and powerful counter-narrative to Eurocentric art histories.
The Signature Material: Jute Sacks and the Scars of Global Trade
Mahama is globally renowned for his colossal, textile-based works constructed from repurposed jute sacks and other industrial remnants, materials that serve as both literal and symbolic archives of global trade and post-colonial economic narratives. These jute sacks, originally manufactured in Southeast Asia and imported by the Ghana Cocoa Board to transport cocoa beans—one of Ghana’s biggest exports—are deeply imprinted with the scars of their complex journeys and the residue of the goods they once carried, symbolizing the asymmetries of commodity flows and human labour. The sacks bear the marks, stamps, and grime of multiple hands, documenting the movement of goods, labour, and histories across borders and continents, embodying a profound sense of material memory.
Working in collaboration with dozens of artisans, technicians, and traders in a process that itself reflects communal labour and collective agency, Mahama and his team sew these tattered sacks together into enormous patchwork quilts. The resulting monumental textiles are then used to dramatically envelop and conceal buildings—including theatres, museums, and historical structures—in public spaces across Africa, Europe, and North America, visually altering perceptions of space and history. This act of covering an architectural facade with the worn fabric of trade creates a powerful visual metaphor, drawing attention to the overlooked narratives of labour, resource extraction, and exploitation that underpin the global economy, forcing a confrontation with the entangled legacies of art, architecture, and global commerce.
The process of acquiring and repairing the sacks is a labour-intensive, economic transaction in itself, involving a wide network of market actors, from sellers who gather the discarded material to the stitchers who meticulously repair and combine them, essentially creating a micro-economy around the production of the artwork. The deliberate deployment of the jute sacks as an architectural skin transforms the often-heroic or imposing structures they cover into temporary monuments of vulnerability and shared economic burden. When a grand, Western institution like a historical palazzo is draped in the material residue of African trade, the artwork initiates a powerful spatial and historical dialogue, collapsing geographical distance and forcing a meditation on the source of global wealth and power. Critics frequently note that the grime and imperfections embedded in the material are essential; they are not sanitized aesthetic choices but factual traces of history, serving as an indelible ledger of the human effort and environmental cost associated with the commodities that fuel the global market. Mahama refers to the sacks as ‘ghosts of failure and crisis,’ underscoring their role as silent witnesses to the exploitation inherent in the historical and present-day mechanisms of global capital exchange.
This method of production, which is fundamentally a collaborative and community-driven endeavour, is as crucial to the work’s meaning as the material itself. Mahama’s works are not singular objects produced by an isolated genius, but are the result of collective labour undertaken by Ghanaian workers, many of whom are women stitchers and local market traders. By employing these individuals and compensating them fairly, the production process itself becomes a conscious re-injection of capital into the very communities whose economic narratives the art addresses. This embedded ethical framework transforms the monumental installations into statements not just about past exploitation, but about present agency, shared labour, and economic redistribution, effectively turning the artwork into a micro-engine for social benefit within the artist’s local ecosystem.
Major Exhibitions: From KNUST to Documenta and Beyond
Mahama’s ascent began with early site-specific interventions in Ghana, such as Kawokudi and Nima in Accra (2013) and the Adum Railway Station in Kumasi (2013), laying the critical foundation for his global career before his work exploded onto the international scene. His breakthrough moment arrived at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015, where his work Out of Bounds consisted of a monumental cascade of patched jute sacks draping a vast corridor in the Arsenale complex. This intervention was curated by Okwui Enwezor, and its significance lay in placing the material reality of global commodity exchange directly within the historic former armory of the Venetian Empire, suggesting a critical continuity in global trade imbalances. Following this, his presence at documenta 14 in 2017 was a major critical success, where he executed two projects: encasing the former municipal market in Athens, Greece, and later wrapping the Torwache, a gatehouse building in Kassel, Germany, with his signature textiles, physically linking sites of European debt crisis and historical power with materials symbolic of post-colonial commerce.
His engagement with Germany and Austria has been particularly rich and conceptual, extending beyond the jute sack pieces to deeper explorations of Ghanaian infrastructure and labour. In 2016, his solo exhibition Food Distribution Corporation at the K21 Ständehaus in Düsseldorf, Germany, focused on a building in Accra originally intended for a state-owned food corporation, showcasing his commitment to utilizing architectural ruins as vessels for historical critique. In 2018, he exhibited A straight line through the Carcass of History, 1918-1945 at the daadgalerie in Berlin, a title that speaks to his ongoing excavation of complex historical timelines, often incorporating salvaged elements like leather scraps and colonial-era photographs. His major 2025 solo exhibition, Zilijifa, at the Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna, Austria, is a towering achievement, featuring a German-built diesel locomotive from Ghana’s failed railway network, suspended precariously over thousands of metal ‘headpans’—a powerful, physical metaphor for debt, labour, and the weight of history.
In the United Kingdom, Mahama’s work has been equally impactful. His 2019 exhibition Parliament of Ghosts at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, dismantled the romanticized notion of historical progress by using 120 salvaged second-class train seats from Ghana’s defunct railway system, creating a haunting, democratic chamber of failed post-independence ambition. This was followed by a return to London in 2021 with the exhibition Lazarus at White Cube Bermondsey, which involved sculptures of suspended forms constructed from rebar and draped in tarpaulin, inspired by the bat colony inhabiting the Nkrumah Volini silo—a meditation on rebirth and the remnants of national projects. Most recently, his 2024 commission Purple Hibiscus saw him envelop the massive, concrete façade of the Barbican Centre in London with 2,000 square meters of vibrant pink and indigo textiles, a powerful, contrasting gesture that draped the Brutalist monument in fabrics imbued with Ghanaian history and intergenerational knowledge, juxtaposing two monumental architectural histories.
His involvement in the Venice Biennale culminated in 2019 with his representation in the inaugural Ghana Pavilion with A Straight Line Through the Carcass of History, a work that included smoked fish cages and archival materials, deepening his engagement with the material residue of Ghana’s colonial past. This was followed by his participation in the 18th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale in 2023, demonstrating his expanding focus on architectural and infrastructural failure and transformation. Beyond Europe, Mahama’s solo exhibition Labour of Many at the Norval Foundation in Cape Town, South Africa (2019), and his inclusion in the 22nd Biennale of Sydney, Australia (2020), affirmed his reach across the Global South. From his early public interventions like Cannon Wax in Jamestown, Accra (2013), to his 2024 solo show A Spell of Good Things at White Cube New York, Mahama’s exhibition history systematically traces a dialogue between local Ghanaian materials and global post-colonial critique, using the international stage to re-center the conversation on the politics of material and labour.
Further cementing his international standing, Mahama’s works have been prominently featured in significant thematic group exhibitions that explore global labour and material histories. These include All the World’s Futures (56th Venice Biennale, 2015), A Short Story of African Art (Tate Modern, London), and Material Effects (Smart Museum of Art, Chicago, 2019), where his jute sack installations were placed in conversation with other artists engaging with post-industrial detritus and geopolitical histories. His ability to move seamlessly between monumental architectural draping and focused, gallery-based installations using smaller, but equally charged, materials like decommissioned machinery, old photographs, and charred objects, underscores the versatility and depth of his commitment to material memory. Every exhibition, regardless of geography, functions as a political act of archiving, challenging the viewer to confront the economic and human costs embedded within the very structures and commodities that define modern life.
Curatorial and Institutional Vision: The Tamale Ecosystem
Crucially, Mahama’s influence is not limited to his individual artistic output but is fundamentally rooted in his role as a pioneering creator of new cultural infrastructure in Ghana, embodying the shift towards artists taking control of production and distribution channels. Recognizing the structural needs of the local art scene, he has strategically invested his sales proceeds from international blue-chip galleries back into building a dynamic, self-sustaining cultural ecosystem in his hometown of Tamale, a model ArtReview highlighted as central to his power ranking. This transformative, artist-led initiative has created a vibrant hub for contemporary art in the Northern Region of Ghana, challenging the traditional centralization of the art world in Accra and other global cities.
The cornerstone of this vision is the Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art (SCCA), which Mahama founded in 2019 as an artist-run hub for research, exhibitions, engagement, and artist residencies. SCCA is complemented by the vast studio complex Red Clay Studio, which opened in Janna Kpeŋŋ in 2020 and comprises exhibition spaces, research facilities, and residency centres, fostering local and international artistic exchange. Adding to this consortium, in 2021, Mahama opened Nkrumah Volini, a renovated Brutalist-style silo originally built to store food during the post-independence era, which he intends to convert into a cultural institution, symbolically transforming a monument of abandoned utopian potential into a site for regeneration and future-making.
Mahama’s commitment to self-determination extends deeply into his curatorial practice, which uses the SCCA and Red Clay as primary platforms for institutional experimentation and historical reclamation. He has leveraged these spaces to present exhibitions that foreground Ghanaian and African history, material culture, and contemporary artistic practice, often initiating local dialogues with international resonance. Notably, Mahama curated the inaugural exhibition at SCCA in 2019, which focused on the intersection of local history and contemporary art, demonstrating an immediate commitment to historical research and archiving. His curatorial work frequently involves loaning historical materials and archives, such as post-independence political documents and photographs, to give them a renewed public life, directly challenging the tradition of keeping such materials locked away or dispersed abroad.
Beyond Tamale, Mahama’s curatorial vision has been sought after internationally, most prominently with his appointment as the curator of the 35th Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts in 2023. Titled From the void came gifts of the sun, this major international event was structured around seven venues across Slovenia’s capital, where Mahama worked alongside six curators and curatorial collectives to explore the legacy of the Non-Aligned Movement from a Ghanaian and African perspective. By framing a major European biennial around the principles of solidarity, care, and de-colonization, Mahama shifted the curatorial focus from purely aesthetic concerns to one of geopolitical history and mutual exchange. This act of transporting his institutional philosophy—rooted in communal building and historical critique—to a major European platform underscored his unique influence, demonstrating that his vision is not merely local, but a template for a more equitable and politically aware global art structure.
A critical aspect of SCCA and Red Clay’s mission is the preservation and reactivation of neglected post-colonial architecture. Mahama’s projects at these sites, and especially at the Nkrumah Volini silo, are fundamentally curatorial acts of spatial and historical reclamation. He transforms the silo, a relic of Ghana’s ambitious but ultimately failed industrialization plan under Kwame Nkrumah, into a cultural centre, curating its historical memory through contemporary engagement. Similarly, the Red Clay Studio complex, built from repurposed shipping containers and located in the rural village of Janna Kpeŋŋ, is itself an exhibition of sustainable, resourceful architecture and a curated environment for collective cultural production, actively demonstrating an alternative to inherited colonial blueprints for institutional space. Through these infrastructural projects, Mahama curates the very conditions for artistic production and historical reflection in Ghana, ensuring that the legacy of his generation is one of not just artistic output, but enduring cultural self-determination.
Awards and Collections: Global Recognition of a Foundational Practice
Ibrahim Mahama’s groundbreaking artistic and institutional contributions have earned him significant formal recognition, cementing his status as a leading figure in the global art establishment, even as his work actively critiques its structures. Most recently, and reinforcing the timing of his top ArtReview placement, Mahama was honored with the Gold Award in the Established Artist category at the inaugural Art Basel Awards in 2025, an honor presented during Art Basel Miami Beach. This prestigious award celebrates visionaries who are pushing the boundaries of contemporary art and acknowledges the profound impact of his transdisciplinary practice, particularly his work in creating new infrastructure for community-based learning. The recognition from Art Basel—the apex of the global art market—is a powerful validation that his method of channeling commercial success directly into social and cultural development is now considered a gold standard of artistic influence.
This pinnacle of recognition joins a history of major institutional acknowledgment. Mahama’s works are held in the permanent collections of some of the world’s most important public institutions, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in California, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. His inclusion in these collections ensures that his critical narratives regarding trade, labour, and post-colonial legacy are archived and studied for generations within the very Western institutions they often critique. Furthermore, his inclusion in the shortlist for the Fourth Plinth commission in London (2021), a highly visible public art project, speaks to his recognition in the sphere of monumental public installations. These awards and acquisitions are not just personal victories but serve as key institutional markers that amplify the criticality and importance of Ghanaian and African contemporary art on the world stage, transforming his individual practice into a foundational movement for global cultural change.
Mahama’s critical reception has also been solidified by his recognition through various prestigious grants and foundation supports early in his career, which helped propel his ambitious, large-scale projects. For instance, the sheer logistical and material demands of his monumental sack installations, such as those at Documenta and the Venice Biennale, required significant institutional backing, underscoring the trust placed in his vision by major art organizations. Beyond financial support, his work has been the subject of dedicated scholarly publications and doctoral theses globally, confirming his profound intellectual contribution to fields beyond art, including post-colonial studies, urban planning, and material culture. The collective weight of these awards, critical accolades, and deep institutional acquisitions establishes that Mahama is not a momentary flash in the pan, but a foundational figure whose influence is measured across the spheres of creation, scholarship, ethical production, and cultural preservation.
Ibrahim Mahama’s ascension to the top of the ArtReview Power 100 is more than a deserved recognition of a singular artistic genius; it is a momentous acknowledgment of a paradigm shift in the global art world. His influence is rooted in a unique synergy: the spectacle of his monumental, internationally exhibited art—pieces that critique global economic flows using the discarded materials of Ghanaian trade—is inextricably linked to his profound commitment to building durable, autonomous cultural infrastructure in his hometown of Tamale. By founding the Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art (SCCA), Red Clay Studio, and reclaiming the Nkrumah Volini silo, Mahama has transformed personal success into collective, sustainable empowerment. He champions a model of the ‘Artist as Institution-Builder,’ actively challenging the dependence of African cultural producers on external validation and funding. This radical act of decentralization and reclamation has redefined what artistic power means in the 21st century, proving that the most influential figures are those who not only create objects of critique but also build the necessary platforms for future generations to speak on their own terms. Mahama is thus celebrated not just as Ghana’s first to top the list, but as the architect of a new, self-determined future for global contemporary art.
