Ibrahim Mahama’s work acquired by Contemporary Art Society's Collections Fund at Frieze

Eight photographic C-prints by Ibrahim Mahama have been acquired by the Contemporary Art Society’s Collections Fund at Frieze London 2022. The suite of photographs will enter the collection of Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery.

Developed in 2019, the photographs document the tattoos that Mahama’s Ghanaian collaborators have had inscribed on their forearms. Tattooing family names or locations of birth on forearms is a common practice throughout rural Ghana, due to a lack of basic identification papers like birth certificates or driver licences. As part of his wider investigation into the social repercussions of the post-independence period, Mahama has overlaid these images onto maps from the British colonial era, or photographed them against decaying leather train seats salvaged from the Gold Coast Railway.