Art Spaces & Legacies lived behind by Visionaries: In a conversation with Bernard Jackson and Ibrahim Mahama

In a demoralizing ecosystem where artistes have to swim all by themselves offshore, one person has been and is trying to change the narrative. In 2019, the Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama founded the Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art in Tamale, the capital of the Northern Region of Ghana.

Dr. Bernard Akoi-Jackson is an artist and writer interrogating hybrid post-colonial African identities, through ephemeral make-shift memorials and performative rituals of the mundane.

Dr. Bernard Jackson, who was also at the Ibrahim Mahama public lecture series inside Nkrumah secret ‘dungeon’ in Tamale on Friday engaged the audience briefly on the need to save art spaces and legacies lived behind by visionaries.

Ibrahim said he hopes to build a future from the history left behind by people who had a great vision about society. He believes our past if brought to this present day, can give us an opportunity to redirect our future to an amazing experience.

As a creative artist, Ibrahim Mahama did not leave out the fact that the way we think affects how we do things. This he said that, by his weird imaginations, he hopes to bring those abstract thoughts to life in his works.

Using critical absurdity Bernard Akoi-Jackson becomes the proverbial jester or Esu moving between genres; dance, poetry, installation, photography, and video to confront the complexities of his specific cultural moment.

Dr. Bernard work has been seen in Ghana, Nigeria, South-Africa, India, UK, Germany, Portugal, and the Netherlands. His writing tracks the development of contemporary Ghanaian and African visual art and culture.

As part of his contribution to the development of Africa through art, Ibrahim was named the 73rd most influential African by theafricareport.com in the list of 100 most influential Africans 2019/2020

As an artist, Mahama has received worldwide acclaim for his large-scale installations crafted from jute sacks and other urban debris. He has exhibited his work widely, with solo shows at institutions including the Whitworth in Manchester, the Norval Foundation in Cape Town, and Fondazione Giuliani in Rome (all 2019). Most recently he was featured in the inaugural edition of the Stellenbosch Triennale, which opened this February. He was among the artists selected for the Apollo 40 under 40 Global in 2017.

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