Mahama’s exhibition at Kunsthalle Wien develops his research on the history of the Ghanaian railway network, first created under British colonial rule during the 1890s. It sees the fulfilment of a long-term aspiration to deconstruct, transport and exhibit a full-size diesel locomotive (one of several British- and German-built trains that Mahama has acquired since 2022). The mechanisms, vessels and networks employed in transporting goods and people are the starting point for a series of works that consider the act of loading, carrying and unloading weight alongside a more abstract notion of the weight of history. Remnants of the railway, an industrial system for transport and trade, are combined with objects and images that refer to the physical act of bearing weight with the body. The centrepiece to the exhibition is an installation that employs a multitude of enamelled iron ‘headpans’ to act as a support for a locomotive.

The pans are a commonplace vessel used in Ghana to carry goods and materials. Mahama amassed a collection of thousands of used pans, exchanging new for old. Chipped, rusted, dented and torn, the objects evidence heavy use. Stacked underneath the train, they bear a locomotive that can be seen as another kind of vessel. Imported from Germany in the 1960s, the decade following the country’s independence, the train was acquired to be used on the lines constructed to carry minerals and crops such as coffee and cocoa to the port for onward transport to Europe. Such infrastructure fundamentally shaped the economics of the country, opening it up to ‘development’ while removing its abundant natural resources. In Mahama’s sculpture, the train appears hollowed out from the inside, a metal shell holding a void.

An accompanying series of photographic works consider the damage inflicted upon the human body by the daily activity of carrying the headpans. These include over 100 X-ray images of spinal deformation that are framed within a metal scaffold removed from the train. At once a symbol of and a system for colonial and capitalist extraction, Mahama’s critique figures the railway as an infrastructure that was literally built on the backs of Ghanaian people.

Biography

Ibrahim Mahama (b. 1987, Tamale, Ghana) has held solo exhibitions at Fruitmarket, Edinburgh (2024); Kunsthalle Osnabrück, Germany (2023); Oude Kerk, Amsterdam; Frac des Pays de la Loire, Nantes (both 2022); University of Michigan Museum of Art (2020); The Whitworth, University of Manchester; Norval Foundation, Cape Town (both 2019); Tel Aviv Art Museum (2016); and K.N.U.S.T Museum, Kumasi (2013). His works for the public realm include commissions from The Barbican Centre (2024); the city of Osnabrück (2023) and The High Line, New York (2021). His work has also been presented within numerous group surveys including Sharjah Biennial 15; 18th Biennale Architettura, Venice; the 35th Bienal de São Paulo (all 2023); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2021); Centre Pompidou, Paris; 22nd Biennale of Sydney; Stellenbosch Triennale (all 2020); 6th Lubumbashi Biennale; Ghana Pavilion, 58th Biennale Arte, Venice (both 2019); Documenta 14, Athens and Kassel (2017); Broad Art Museum, Michigan State University (2016); Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen and Holbæk (2016); 56th Biennale Arte, Venice and K21, Düsseldorf (both 2015). Mahama was also appointed Artistic Director of the 35th Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts (2023). He is the recipient of the inaugural Sam Gilliam Award from the Dia Art Foundation. Mahama lives and works between Accra, Kumasi and Tamale where he has founded several artist-led community initiatives including Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art (SCCA) in 2019, Red Clay Studio in 2020 and, most recently, Nkrumah Volini.