Artist Ibrahim Mahama has rebuilt a crumbling factory inside the Fondation Cartier in Paris as part of a major exhibition exploring Ghana's history before and after colonialism.
The installation is one of several works in the show. Mahama has assembled the factory alongside other pieces that examine Ghana's past, including a 1966 military coup that ended the post-colonial government and centuries-old empires dismantled by colonial powers.
Rather than mourning these historical ruptures, the exhibition frames them as points of departure. Mahama's approach centers on reclamation and reconstruction. One key installation, titled Parliament of Ghosts, consists of Asante stools arranged in a circle where visitors can sit. According to the exhibition description, the piece allows viewers to sense "a new future being worked out right in front of you."
The factory rebuild and Parliament of Ghosts introduce the broader curatorial question the show poses: how Ghana and its people might move forward by learning from past collapse and loss. Mahama has sourced materials from industrial detritus, corporate waste and discarded objects found in post-colonial Ghana to construct these works.
The exhibition opened at the Fondation Cartier in Paris and represents Mahama's largest undertaking to date. The artist has previously worked with found materials and architectural fragments from Ghana to create installations that interrogate histories of loss, extraction and resilience.