Artist Ibrahim Mahama © Artist/Image courtesy of Jon Lowe
Ghanaian artist Iberham Mahama's solo exhibition "Half-Wheel Yellow Day" was featured on April 8 at the White Cube Hong Kong Space. In addition to its high-profile large-scale installations, this first-of-its-kind series of fabric paintings continues the artist's extensive interest in materials and colonial history, giving us an insight into its unique cross-sections with lively variations of colours and patterns.
A piece of colored cloth
How complicated can a past life of a piece of colored cloth be? Ghanaian artist Iberham Mahama uses an exhibition to tell a story about cloth.
This brightly colored, intricately patterned "Dutch batik cloth" traveled to three continents: the goods originally developed by Europe for export to Southeast Asia were deliberately avoided by the locals; the Dutch manufacturers took the opportunity to enter the African market; and the fabrics transformed by African traditions were cheap and immediately became popular in the local area. Materials, business and cultural identities are inextricably linked, composing a chapter of humanity's pre-globalization narrative tone, echoing each other in this and between them.
Iberham Mahma, Coffin for Head of State, batik-wrapped planks, jute thread, 182.9×121.9cm, 2013–2022 © Artist/Image courtesy of Theo Christelis
In addition to the grand narrative of history, the cloth is tightly wrapped and wrapped around Mahama's childhood memories: children collect sugar paper, adults collect stamps, while mothers prefer to collect batik cloth, piece by piece, squarely folded, stacked into a pile of colorful hills.
The strong women who do business in the market wrap batik cloth around their waists, and the bills and steel hammers that come and go are casually stuffed into the folds of the cloth; the mothers who are new mothers are clumsy to dexterous, stumbling and learning to fold a piece of colored cloth into swaddling; the beauty-loving girl wraps her favorite pattern between her hair, and at first glance may not notice her face, but she will certainly be able to see the beautiful batik cloth.
Iberham Mahama, Shakara, batik-wrapped planks, jute thread, 182.9×182.9cm, 2013–2022 © By Theo Christelis
Iberham Mahama "Half Wheel Yellow Day", White Cube Hong Kong, April 8 - May 14 ©, 2022 Artist/Image courtesy of Kitmin Lee
Recalling more deeply, Mahama said that men also use batik cloth, but somehow this texture becomes inseparable from the female body in his mind, and they can't do it without the work. The artist scoured markets across Ghana and exchanged old cloth from women in the cloth business. When it comes to creation, Mahama is often astute and wise, and there is no lack of caution; in the process of talking about collecting materials, his body suddenly becomes loose and rich, his hands are waving in the air, and there is a little pride in his words, "They praised me for my unique vision of picking cloth, and they also regarded me as a fashion designer." ”
Iberham Mahama's Confusion break bones, batik-wrapped planks, jute threads, each: 124×64cm, 2013–2022 © Artist/Image courtesy of Theo Christelis
Iberham Mahama "Half Wheel Yellow Day", White Cube Hong Kong, April 8 - May 14 ©, 2022 Artist/Image courtesy of Kitmin Lee
Iberham Mahama, "Everything Scatter", batik-wrapped planks, jute thread, 182.9×182.9cm, 2013–2022 © Artist/Image courtesy of Theo Christelis
Who would be interested in this series of works? Mahama blurted out, "Everybody. Indeed, the brilliant and harmonious colors constitute universal sensual pleasures, the undulating visual concerto stirs up the frozen air in the "white box" space, and the place the artist wants to touch is deeper and farther away: a cloth carries a magnificent epic and a whispering whisper, telling the flow of capital, the change of consumption and the situation of the laborer. Starting with this cloth, Mahama tells his story.
A pile of old stuff
Mahma was originally a student of painting, but he was not famous in the art world because of his paintings. At the age of 30 at Documenta 14 in Kassel, he collected old jute bags and sewed them together to cover the large building façade, immersing the viewer in an immersive, otherworldly landscape.
Like the intricate batik cloth of a human body, jute bags are frequently found in Ghana's cargo transport, with contents ranging from cocoa beans to grain to charcoal. When the material experience in the package is renewed and iterated, the artist's hometown takes a difficult step towards independence on the long axis of postcolonial history.
Iberham Mahma, Check Point Prosfygika. 1934–2034. 2016–2017", General Materials, Documenta 14th Kassel, 2017, photo courtesy of the artist
Last year, in White Cube's third solo exhibition with Mahama, a spacious space was transformed half like a classroom and half like a factory: between the blackboard newspapers on the walls, the old wooden desks were aligned horizontally and vertically, and a hundred rusty metal sewing machines stood solemnly on the table, activated in turn by a timer, making a noise, and the "ghost in the machine" returned to the world.
At Art Basel Miami in 2017, he and collaborators produced thousands of "shoe boxes", which were stacked one by one until they formed a monument. High heels, hammers, needles... The contents of the box are also the livelihood of shoe shine children wandering the streets of Ghana.
Iberham Mahama, CAPITAL CORPSES, Blackboard, Sewing Machine and Wooden Desk, Variable Size, 2019-2021 © Artist/Image courtesy of White Cube
It is not difficult to find that this artist born in 1987 cherishes the old and loves the old. The collage works presented in this solo exhibition have faded into a dull and old color, but behind the bright and beautiful is actually the old cloth exchanged for new cloth. "Old" is not only subordinate to a category of visual elements that are "excluded" by modern society, but also a unique way of working in Mahama, which is willing to seek the near and far: get rid of the contemporary logical inertia of seeking newness and difference, go back to the stream, and exhaust time and energy to find the appearance of "old". In his own words: "The key is not to escape, but to go back in time." ”
Iberham Mahama, Non–Orientable Nkansa, Mixed Materials, Variable Size, 2017 Artist/Image courtesy of © White Cube
On top of nostalgia, Mahama takes the clues and contexts further: facing the memories and preventing himself from staying in the blank space of remembrance and remembrance. On the surface, its large apparatus is usually a memory monomer formed in the form of wrapping, repeating, or stacking; but it always leaves room for the old substance to be deconstructed and then recombined. The sewing machine gained its independence from its operators, as evidenced by the noise clicking; the abandoned buildings clad in jute bags were revived, creating a landscape unprecedented on Earth. The Mahma not only belongs to the past, but also tries to look to the future.
Iberham Mahama, KAAH SEA, charcoal jute bag, scrap metal tarpaulin, metal label, 488×406cm, 2017 Artist/Image courtesy of © White Cube
A comeback
24/7/365, Mahama is not only the "brain" of huge projects, a regular visitor to top exhibitions, but also runs three art-related institutions. In 2019, he opened the Savanna Center for Contemporary Art (SCCA) in Tamali, as well as the Red Clay with integrated studio and research functions, and two years later, he renovated the tube building into a cultural and educational institution, Nkrumah Voli-ni, to extend the scope of activities of the former two. When asked about his proudest identity, Mahama's answer was unbiased but weighty: "An artist with a sense of social responsibility." ”
Savanna Center for Contemporary Art (SCCA), Tamali, Ghana © Artist/Image courtesy of White Cube
After becoming known for his large-scale installations, Mahma returned to the beginning of his artistic career in this solo exhibition in Hong Kong, revealing his sensibility and intuition as a painter. From picking fabrics to implementing stitching, he chooses to trust his eyes, "like using paint on a canvas," a feeling that is both familiar and natural. The cloth is old and inevitably leaves some of the mottled of time, but when they undergo multiple treatments of the artist's stretching, folding, and equality, leaving only the most basic patterns and colors in the visual world on the surface of the fabric, Mahama is able to return to the pure authenticity of painting.
Iberham Mahama, "Opposite People", batik-wrapped planks, jute thread, 182.9×182.9cm, 2013–2022 © By The Artist/Image courtesy of Theo Christelis
Iberham Mahma, Sorrow tears and blood, batik-wrapped planks, jute thread, 182.9×121.9cm, 2013–2022 © By Theo Christelis
Surprisingly, there is also a footnote to the date of the work: 2013-2022. The artist is only 35 years old, but the thinking and practice of this series has continued for nearly a decade, and it is also nearly one-third of the journey of life. When Mahama was an art student, he collected beautiful batik cloth old objects like his mother did when she was young, and set about building an extensive material archive.
In large-scale parcel projects in jute bags, he is constantly learning and experimenting with new possibilities for fabric stitching: juxtaposition, superposition, breaking the boundaries of the picture frame... The work looks like a painting from the front, with undulating heights and undulations from the side, and dense stitching and stitching up close. Thus, the two-dimensional plane extends into a multivariate dimension.
Iberham Mahama "Half Wheel Yellow Day", White Cube Hong Kong, April 8 - May 14 ©, 2022 Artist/Image courtesy of Kitmin Lee
This solo exhibition of The White Cube in Hong Kong is the artist's first appearance in China and the first large-scale exhibition of the colored batik series. After repeatedly balancing locality and internationalization, he chose to meet hong Kong audiences with a coherent and distinctive creative branch line. Throwing a piece of colored cloth from his hometown into an unfamiliar city, Mahama expects a new cultural context to dye it with an extra layer of color.
It is on display
Exhibition: Half Round Yellow Day
When: April 8-May 14, 2022
Address: White Cube Hong Kong
Editor, Wen Sheng Luoying
This article is original by Harper's Bazaar Art Department and may not be reproduced without permission