Ibrahim Mahama Is Building Art Infrastructure in Tamale

The project belongs to artist Ibrahim Mahama, whose international career helps finance cultural infrastructure in the region where he was born.

Through the Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art, Red Clay and Nkrumah Voli-ni, Mahama is building places where artists can work, histories can be preserved and local audiences can encounter ideas that might otherwise remain distant.

Turning an artistic practice into institutions

Mahama’s installations use materials marked by labour and exchange, including jute sacks previously used to transport cocoa and charcoal. His interest in what objects carry, and what abandoned structures might become, also informs his institution building.

The Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art, or SCCA, opened in March 2019. Red Clay followed in September 2020, combining Mahama’s studio with exhibition, research and educational spaces. Nkrumah Voli-ni opened in April 2021 inside a former grain silo, bringing another piece of Ghana’s industrial history into cultural use.

These spaces also create room for other artists’ work. SCCA presented retrospectives of Kofi Dawson in 2019 and Agyeman Ossei in 2020, giving their practices sustained curatorial attention. That matters beyond the exhibitions themselves: documenting and interpreting earlier generations helps younger artists understand the history they are working within.

Making access part of the programme

Mahama’s approach depends on what happens inside and beyond the buildings. Reuters documented free educational sessions at Red Clay covering subjects including basic engineering and computer science. The aircraft provide an unusual setting, but the purpose is practical: making unfamiliar technologies available for exploration.

Outreach takes that work into surrounding communities. In 2023, Frieze reported on Mahama delivering a lecture in Dagbani at a primary school near Kumbungu, accompanied by singer Kokui Selormey, who led a music workshop. The same report identified curator Selom Kudjie as SCCA’s artistic director, underlining the role of collaborators in developing the institutions’ programmes.

For artists, the spaces offer opportunities for research, residencies and exhibitions. For local visitors, they make contemporary art something that can be encountered close to home. Their value lies partly in that continuity: a building can support repeated visits, conversations and experimentation long after an individual exhibition closes.

Reinvesting international success locally

The funding model connects Mahama’s art career to these public activities. He has described using proceeds from exhibitions and sales to build the institutions. In a 2026 Art Basel interview, he estimated that around a fifth of his earnings went back into them through workshops and community programmes. That is his own estimate, rather than an audited institutional budget.

Operating costs also influence the architecture. Mahama has explained how passive ventilation and exposed brick reduce the need for cooling and repeated painting. Design decisions therefore support the ambition to keep substantial spaces in use over time.

The longer-term challenge is maintaining programmes, expertise and access beyond any single exhibition cycle. Mahama’s contribution already makes a clear proposition: international artistic success can finance resources that others use. In Tamale, that means places to study, make, exhibit and debate, with the potential to support creative careers that have yet to begin.

Sources :

APALAZZOGALLERY, “Ibrahim Mahama” APALAZZOGALLERY

Frieze, “How Ibrahim Mahama’s Installations Exhume Political Ghosts” Frieze

Frieze, “Three Institutions Redefining Art in Tamale” Frieze

Reuters via MyJoyOnline, “Education takes flight under Ghanaian artist’s repurposed planes” MyJoyOnline

Art Basel, “Ibrahim Mahama digs up the past to build new futures” Art Basel