London – A major installation piece by Ghanaian artist, Ibrahim Mahama will be offered in the Modern and Contemporary African Art sale on 16 October 2024 at Bonhams London. The monumental work, Untitled from 2013, has an estimate of £30,000-50,000 and comprises 11 draped coal sacks made from jute, that hang down from the walls. The work was first exhibited in Pangaea: New Art from Africa to Latin America at the Saatchi Gallery in 2014. It is being offered from the Saatchi Collection. The works will be on view until 29 August at Bonhams New Bond Street.

Helene Love-Allotey, Head of Modern and Contemporary African Art Department, said: "This is one of the most spectacular installations we have shown at Bonhams, and which was hung with supervision from the artist himself. It's a work that heralds Ibrahim Mahama's early deep interest in how textiles have been recycled and repurposed and what can be drawn from the history of the threads and the memories embedded in them."

Born in 1987 in Tamale, Ibrahim Mahama is one of the most exciting contemporary artists working in Africa today. Educated at Ghana's prestigious Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (K.N.U.S.T.) with a degree in Painting and a Masters in Painting and Sculpture, Mahama had a work chosen for Ghana's first national pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019. His work also featured at Documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel in 2017. Additionally, Mahama has had solo exhibitions at the White Cube gallery in London – most recently, Lazurus in 2021 - and has created major installation works at Kumasi Railway station. In July 2024, Mahama transformed the Barbican Arts Centre by enveloping the Brutalist concrete walls in 2,000 metres of woven cloth. The work, Purple Hibiscus, was a collaboration with hundreds of craftspeople from Mahama's birthplace, Tamale in Ghana.

Made in Southeast Asia, Untitled from 2013 is created out of sacks imported by the Ghana Cocoa Boards to package cocoa beans for export. The used sacks are then repurposed to carry animal feed, coal, and charcoal around the country for domestic consumption. Roughly printed or drawn on the surface of the sacks are the companies and traders' names or transit locations by which they travel. For Mahama, the jute sacks are material metaphors for the global circulation of commodities that pass through Ghana and its associated socio-economic inequities. At Bonhams, the work has been installed with the supervision of the artist himself so that the 11 separate sheets are draped and ripple which contributes to a fluid motion. The work will be on view at Bonhams New Bond Street until 29 August, 2024.