Ibrahim Mahama imagines for the Fondation Cartier a living entity in resonance with the art centres he founded in Tamale, in northern Ghana. With associated artists, he invests all of the institution's spaces, at Place du Palais-Royal, with works created specifically for the site, as well as unreleased versions of some of his emblematic installations.
Since its creation, the Fondation Cartier has established itself as a space for dialogue, experimentation and artistic exploration, attentive to the places where contemporary creation emerges and to the voices that run through it. From the 1990s on, it played a pioneering role in presenting artists from the African continent, such as Seydou Keïta, Bodys Isek Kingelez, Malick Sidibé, J. D. 'Okhai Ojeikere or Chéri Samba. It is within this continuity that Le Temps des récoltes, Ibrahim Mahama's first Parisian exhibition, takes its place; for the occasion he joins nine artists and collectives.
Ibrahim Mahama (born 1987 in Tamale, Ghana) has established himself on the international scene through installations made from collected materials, archives and fragments of industrial heritage that he reactivates to shape new imaginaries. Since the 2010s he has developed a body of work based on exploring Ghana's colonial and postcolonial legacies. Drawing on his country's industrial and commercial history, he questions the circulation of goods, the transmission of know-how and the preservation of heritage. His work highlights political, social and economic continuities and ruptures, paying particular attention to infrastructure, traces of the past and collective dynamics.
Conceived by Ibrahim Mahama with nine artists and collectives, all linked to him through collaborations, research or long-standing exchanges, the exhibition Le Temps des récoltes directly extends this approach. It echoes the three art centres the artist has founded in Tamale, in northern Ghana, since 2019. Conceived as spaces for creation, transmission and local roots, these centres contribute to the emergence of a network of independent cultural institutions on the African continent, where pedagogy holds a central place. Ibrahim Mahama's centres engage in dialogue with parallel initiatives on the African continent. Examples include doual'art in Douala, Cameroon, founded in 1991 by Marilyn Douala Bell and Didier Schaub, which is seen as a pioneer; the Centre for Contemporary Art Lagos (CCA) in Nigeria, initiated in 2007 by Bisi Silva; RAW Material Company in Dakar, founded in 2008 by Koyo Kouoh; and, more recently, the Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute (NCAI) in Kenya, opened in 2020 by the Anglo-Kenyan artist Michael Armitage.
All these institutions have, each in its own way, invented new sustainable models in constant dialogue with their environment. In resonance with these initiatives, the exhibition is concerned with the political, cultural and social utopias formulated at the time of African independence in the 1950s and 1960s, and proposes to reactivate their imaginaries in order to question possible futures.
For the exhibition, Ibrahim Mahama presents new works conceived specifically for the site, as well as unreleased versions of a selection of his most emblematic installations, including Parliament of Ghosts. This installation, which takes the form of a parliamentary chamber, is made from traditional Ashanti wooden seats on which visitors are invited to sit. The work embodies Ibrahim Mahama's collective and living practice, which shapes the present by creating spaces of life and potential from ancient materials. Emptied of its representatives, this "ghost" parliament becomes a metaphor for a failed democracy, echoing the 1966 coup in Ghana and the dissolution of the government. Throughout the exhibition, Parliament of Ghosts becomes a circular stage and comes alive to the rhythm of a programme combining music, performances, meetings and debates. It also hosts a series of masterclasses and lectures in collaboration with art schools.
Ibrahim Mahama also presents a monumental architectural installation designed specifically for the Fondation Cartier building, titled Things Fall Apart, a reconstruction of a former Ghanaian glass bottle factory made from the original materials. Inaugurated in 1966 in the south-west of the country, this factory was among the last major decentralisation projects of the first president, Kwame Nkrumah, before his fall. By buying this abandoned factory and dismantling it to relocate it to Tamale, Ibrahim Mahama reactivates it as a work and as a place of learning, and reinscribes Ghana's industrial memory within a narrative of the future. Finally, the artist will create a textile installation for the arcades of the Fondation Cartier façade, visible from Place du Palais-Royal.