Ibrahim Mahama has made some curious purchases over the past three years: a grain silo, and several aeroplanes meant for the scrapyard. In 2020, the Ghanaian artist acquired the silo, which had lain unused since the 1960s, in the town of Tamale in Ghana’s northern region. Mahama renovated the decrepit building and opened the space as Nkrumah Volini, a cultural institution featuring exhibitions and programming for locals and younger generations that he hopes will inspire.
It’s this same drive for fostering young minds that motivated the artist to open the Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art and the Red Clay Studio in Tamale, the latter of which also serves as the artist’s studio space.
Mahama offers to give a mini tour of Red Clay Studio over video chat. A far cry from the stereotype of an artist’s studio—a high-ceilinged, paint-filled room where the temperamental artist works in tortured solitude—his is more of a complex and
