Ibrahim Mahama is one of the four currently short-listed artists proposing work to occupy the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, London. "On Hunger and Farming in the Skies of the Past 1957-66" explores the Brutalist grain silos built by Eastern European architects in a utopian spirit in post-colonial Ghana (Tamale in particular), only to become abandoned relics, and symbols of the dashing of many of the hopes of early independence. 

For his online talk for CAMP, he will talk about the exhumation of the silo in Tamale and the forms that emerged from it both artistically and politically; and the relationship between the silo and the 'Parliament of Ghosts' (a recent installation commissioned by Manchester International Festival).

He will talk about his repurposing of old aircraft into classrooms at Redclay Studios, Ghana, and will look at institutional building as an artistic practice. 

BIOGRAPHY
Ibrahim Mahama (b.1987) in Tamale Ghana is an artist who lives and works in Accra, Kumasi and Tamale, Ghana. He started his practice through his interest in the history of materials and architecture. Failure and delay through specific forms always inform his choice of sites which he believes the works do not only occupy but are also occupied within the works/objects. Residues and points of chaos registered as marks within the forms he selects, they present us alternative perspectives of looking into the materials/Labour conditions of society. Form is important. His work has included objects from jute sacks used to transport commodities to the point of decay and later sewn together with a network of collaborators under specific Labour conditions which is then superimposed on architecture. The politics of the hand and it’s parallel relation with architectural forms become a lot more evident. His work, a straight line through the carcass of history, has also dealt with forms related to the second world war and bacteria life. His work has been included in the 56, 57 and 58 Venice Biennale, documenta 14 Athens and Kassel, Orderly Disorderly, Accra, Images An Age of Our Own Making, Denmark, the island is what the sea surrounds, Valletta 18, Malta and Spectacles Spectations, Kumasi Ghana and Labour of Many at the Norval Foundation, Cape Town, Parliament of Ghosts at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester and currently at the 22nd Sydney Biennale. He finished a year residency with the DAAD in Berlin in 2018. In march 2019, 2020 and 2021 he opened SCCA Tamale, Redclay studios and Nkrumah Voli-ni respectively, which are artist run spaces, built and dedicated to retrospectives of practices, pedagogical forms, experimentations and expanding imaginations within the emerging generation. His current interests are using specific architectural forms within history in the formation of spaces inspired by the potentialities and failures of modernity. 
Photo credit: Peter Rosemann

ACCESS INFORMATION
This workshop will take place on Zoom, using video & audio, and  you can participate during the Q and A session after the talk (either by voice or text chat). You are very welcome to bring a support worker with you to the session (just let us know by email after you book so we can share the Zoom link with them too). There is live-captioning (words pop up as they are spoken).

Please let us know if you have any access needs by 14 June 2021, via info@camp-plymouth.org, so we can make arrangements