Sacks, Silos and Kassel
Ibrahim Mahama, the first Ghanaian to win Kassel's Arnold Bode Prize, has also spent years building art spaces in and around Tamale.
Sacks that once carried cocoa and charcoal are Ibrahim Mahama's signature material. In 2017, at documenta 14, he wrapped the Torwache, the twin gatehouse buildings on Kassel's Brüder-Grimm-Platz, in jute sacks.
Kassel has now returned the attention. On 29 October, at a ceremony in the German city, the Tamale-born artist received the 2026 Arnold Bode Prize, Kassel's award for contemporary art, 3News reported. The prize carries €10,000 and is named after Arnold Bode, the founder of documenta. Mahama is its first Ghanaian winner. Romuald Hazoumé of Benin, honoured in 2007, is among the African artists who received it before him.
The trustees described Mahama as an artist who sets out to shape both the art-historical canon and people's lives, according to a report by the regional broadcaster hessenschau. The second half of that description is easiest to follow at home.
Mahama studied at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi. He has founded three institutions in and around Tamale: the Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art, Red Clay Studio and Nkrumah Voli-ni. The last occupies an abandoned grain silo complex from the Kwame Nkrumah era. The work of keeping such places has its losses. In February, fire destroyed one of the heritage trains at Red Clay Studio during repair works.
The same habit of opening the door to others shows in his Paris exhibition. The Harvest Season, his biggest exhibition yet in France, opened at the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain on 22 October and runs until 28 February 2027. Mahama invited nine artists and collectives to share the space, among them James Barnor, Gideon Appah, Dorothy Akpene Amenuke and Zohra Opoku. In Accra, Gallery 1957's group show Where the Earth Remembers, which opened at Galleria Mall on 31 October and runs to 16 January 2027, names him among its artists.
His spaces in the north sit within a longer pattern of Ghanaian artists building the rooms their work needs. In 1993, Ablade Glover, whom The Art Journal calls a legendary Ghanaian artist, founded the Artists Alliance Gallery as a place to show all forms of work. Amoako Boafo founded the residency dot.ateliers in 2020. Two years later, the artist and curator Nuna Adisenu-Doe founded Compound House Gallery; this October she co-curated, with the Italian curator Andrea Walter Ghia, Beyond Creation, an exhibition of 40 artists from more than 10 countries at the Accra Art Centre.
Why artists rather than the state? The curator Essé Dabla-Attikpo told The Art Journal that artist-led spaces have "filled a gap" in the absence of state-funded backing. Joshua Oheneba-Takyi, a Ghanaian artist and the founder of Creccents Studio, explained it in the language of the pitch: "It’s like when a footballer becomes a coach, they understand the tactics on the field."
That leaves the question the prize cannot answer on its own: what a European honour means for spaces that artists in Ghana are still building and repairing themselves.
In Tamale, the grain silos from Nkrumah's time still stand. They carry a new name: Nkrumah Voli-ni.
“It’s like when a footballer becomes a coach, they understand the tactics on the field.”
- Ibrahim Mahama receives 2026 Arnold Bode Prize in Kassel (3News)
- How Ghana's Artists Built Their Own Ecosystem (The Art Journal)
- Italy, Ghana unite 40 artists for 'Beyond Creation' (MyJoyOnline)
- Art exhibition mapping humanity, nature, spirituality ongoing (Graphic Online)
- Gallery 1957: current exhibitions
