As part of this year’s Edinburgh Art Festival, the Fruitmarket Gallery will be hosting the first-ever solo exhibition in Scotland of the work of Ibrahim Mahama.
Born in Tamale in 1987, Mahama is an artist critically acclaimed for his evocative large-scale, site-specific installations that speak to the cultural and social effects of post-colonialism and global migration.
He burst onto the international art scene at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015 with Out of Bounds, a work that clad the massive outside wall of the Arsenale in jute sacks to create a visually spectacular and thought-provoking installation. This work set the tone for what has become Mahama’s on-going investigation into the life of materials and their dynamic potential – the jute sacks telling a visual history of the narratives of production and trade, and the more human tales embodied within.
Mahama is making a new body of work inspired bythe Fruitmarket Gallery’s unique physical location, supported on columns above Waverley railway station. This proximity to – and dependence on – the railway is the starting point for large scale drawings, sculpture and installations referencing his own interest in and using material from the now defunct colonial-era railway of Ghana.
Fruitmarket will be publishing the first major monograph on the work of Ibrahim Mahama, with new writing by curator Aby Gaye and Congolese artist Godelive Kasangati, as well as an interview with Ibrahim Mahama. Featuring extensive installation photography of his new work created for Fruitmarket, as well as an expanded selection of his immersive installations, this book will detail the processes behind his practice and Red Clay Studio, a cultural institution that is a space for interrogation and artistic change in Ghana.
Ibrahim Mahama Songs about Roses
13th July – 6th October 2024
Fruitmarket, 45 Market Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1DF.
Free entry
Open daily 11am–6pm
Extended Edinburgh Art Festival Hours
9th -25th August 2024 10am–6pm
Irene Brown
Radio Summerhall Arts 