Ibrahim Mahama. Harvest Time

For the Fondation Cartier, Ibrahim Mahama envisions a living entity in resonance with the art centers he has founded in Tamale, in northern Ghana. Together with associated artists, he occupies the entire space of the institution at the Place du Palais-Royal with works created specifically for the venue, as well as new versions of some of his iconic installations.

Since its inception, the Fondation Cartier has established itself as a space for dialogue, experimentation, and artistic exploration, attentive to the places where contemporary creation emerges and the voices that traverse it. From the 1990s, 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, and Chéri Samba. Harvest Time, Ibrahim Mahama’s first Parisian exhibition, follows in this continuity as he joins forces with nine artists and collectives.

Ibrahim Mahama (born in 1987 in Tamale, Ghana) has made his mark on the international scene with installations created 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 the exploration of Ghana’s colonial and post-colonial legacies. Drawing on his country’s industrial and commercial history, he questions the circulation of goods, the transmission of skills, and the preservation of heritage. His work highlights political, social, and economic continuities and ruptures, with particular attention to infrastructure, traces of the past, and collective dynamics.

Conceived by Ibrahim Mahama with nine artists and collectives—all connected to him through long-standing collaborations, research, or exchanges—the exhibition Harvest Time is a direct extension of this approach. It echoes the three art centers founded by the artist in Tamale, northern Ghana, since 2019. Designed as spaces for creation, transmission, and local grounding, these centers contribute to the emergence of a network of independent cultural institutions on the African continent, where pedagogy plays a central role. Ibrahim Mahama’s centers are in dialogue with parallel initiatives on the African continent. These include doual’art in Douala, Cameroon, founded in 1991 by Marilyn Douala Bell and Didier Schaub, which served 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 Anglo-Kenyan artist Michael Armitage.

All these institutions have, in their own way, invented new sustainable models in constant dialogue with their environment. In resonance with these initiatives, the exhibition explores the political, cultural, and social utopias formulated at the time of African independence in the 1950s and 1960s, and proposes to reactivate their imaginaries to question possible futures.

For the exhibition, Ibrahim Mahama presents new works designed specifically for the site, as well as unprecedented versions of a selection of his most iconic installations, including Parliament of Ghosts. This installation, which takes the form of a parliamentary chamber, is made from traditional Ashanti wooden stools 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 d’état in Ghana and the dissolution of the government. Throughout the duration of the exhibition, Parliament of Ghosts becomes a circular stage, enlivened by a program combining music, performances, encounters, and debates. It also hosts a series of masterclasses and conferences 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 an old Ghanaian glass bottle factory made from the original materials. Inaugurated in 1966 in the southwest of the country, this factory was among the last major decentralization projects of the first president, Kwame Nkrumah, before his fall. By purchasing this abandoned factory and dismantling it to relocate it to Tamale, Ibrahim Mahama reactivates it as a work and a place of learning, re-inscribing Ghana’s industrial memory into a narrative of the future. Finally, the artist will create a textile installation for the arches of the Fondation Cartier facade, visible from the Place du Palais-Royal.