Ibrahim Mahama: A Shea Garden

“A Shea Garden” presents a new body of work by Ibrahim Mahama, developed in collaboration with Galleria Barovier&Toso and Apalazzogallery. Known for monumental installations using jute sacks and railway sleepers to reveal the infrastructures of global trade, Mahama here investigates the material transformation of traditional clay vessels from northern Ghana. These humble objects, originally used for agricultural cycles and domestic storage, are translated into Murano glass, shifting their language from opaque, utilitarian clay to transparent, fragile sculptural forms.

The exhibition title refers to the shea tree, a vital resource in northern Ghana traditionally harvested and processed by women. The project explores how everyday materials absorb the marks of economic and political systems, mapping networks of colonial extraction and global commerce. By recreating these vessels in glass, Mahama addresses themes of loss, memory, and displacement, preserving the absence of the life the objects once contained.

The exhibition brings the legacies of African labour and infrastructure into dialogue with the centuries-old tradition of Murano glassmaking. Through this meeting of materials, the exhibition reflects on the persistence of cultural memory and the fragile social systems that continue to shape the circulation of objects and histories across the world.