Ibrahim Mahama’s large installations often begin with used jute sacks. The material has a complicated geography. Many sacks are manufactured in Southeast Asia, imported by the Ghana Cocoa Board for cocoa, then reused to carry food, charcoal and other goods. By the time Mahama gathers them, their surfaces already contain stains, markings, repairs and evidence of labour.
He stitches many of them together and uses the resulting textile to cover buildings or create enormous architectural surfaces.
What interests me is that the material arrives with its own history before the artist makes the first decision.
A clean canvas tries to begin at zero.
Mahama’s sacks cannot.
Someone has carried them. Something has leaked onto them. A name or number has been stamped across the fibre.
The artist does not manufacture those traces. He reorganises them.
That makes the surface behave almost like an archive.
Instead of representing global trade through an image, the material has physically participated in it.
Sometimes the strongest documentary material is the thing that survived the journey.
