Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama is bringing the histories of Ghana’s industrial development, labour and colonial inheritance into a major exhibition at Fondation Cartier in Paris. Titled ‘The Harvest Season’, the exhibition runs from 22 October 2026 to 28 February 2027, bringing together industrial structures, restored cultural objects and works by nine artists and collectives connected to Ghana’s art scene.

The exhibition explores what societies do with the objects, buildings and histories left behind by previous generations. Through the restoration of damaged materials and the reassembly of abandoned structures, Mahama considers how the past can become a resource for new forms of learning, exchange and community life.

Rooted in his work in northern Ghana, the exhibition extends ideas that have shaped his practice for years. Rather than treating discarded objects as useless remnants, Mahama gives them new roles while preserving traces of their previous lives. His approach asks audiences to consider how history continues to shape the present and how repairing damaged objects can also open conversations about social relationships and historical responsibility.

Restoring Objects and Reclaiming Their Histories

Parliament of Ghosts | Photograph by Ernest Sackitey, courtesy of Red Clay.

One of the exhibition’s central installations is Parliament of Ghosts, an assembly of traditional Asante wooden stools collected in Ghana. Some of the stools were damaged and required repair, but their significance extends beyond their physical condition.

In Ghanaian cultural life, stools can carry meanings connected to identity, authority, family and important stages of life. Their carving traditions are also sustained through skills passed from one generation to another. Yet objects of cultural significance have often been removed from their original settings, including through colonial appropriation, and placed in Western museum collections as ethnographic artefacts.

Mahama questions what happens when objects are separated from the communities and practices that give them meaning. For Parliament of Ghosts, he negotiated with the stools’ owners to bring them to his Red Clay art centre in Tamale, where they were repaired with the participation of schoolchildren.

The children observed the restoration process and were invited to sit on the stools as the work progressed. This transformed the process into an opportunity for learning and renewed engagement, rather than simply an exercise in conservation.

For Mahama, the stools are not merely historical objects to be preserved behind glass. Their continued use and interaction with people are part of their lives. The marks left by damage and repair remain visible, recording what the objects have endured rather than concealing their history.

Installation view of Ibrahim Mahama’s The Harvest Season, Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, 2026, featuring Parliament of Ghosts (2026). © Ibrahim Mahama.

Presented in Paris, Parliament of Ghosts also raises questions about how African cultural objects enter European institutions and how their meaning changes when they are removed from their original contexts. The installation gives the stools a new setting in which visitors can gather and consider history, cultural ownership and the relationships between objects and the people who live with them.

A Former Glass Bottle Factory Reassembled in Paris

Installation view of Ibrahim Mahama’s The Harvest Season, Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, 2026, featuring Things Fall Apart (2026). © Ibrahim Mahama.

Another major work in The Harvest Season centres on a former glass bottle factory built in Ghana between 1961 and 1966. Designed in Czechoslovakia and manufactured in Germany, the factory formed part of Ghana’s industrial development following independence. It opened in 1966, just 19 days before the military coup that overthrew the country’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah.

After operating for decades, the factory was decommissioned and sold for scrap. Mahama used funds from Fondation Cartier to buy back part of the structure and transport it to France, where it was reassembled as a pavilion for the exhibition.

He also acquired approximately 300,000 abandoned glass bottles that were destined for destruction, along with the factory’s sign. Working with metalsmiths, his team restored damaged and rusted components while leaving visible traces of their previous condition.

The factory’s history connects Ghana’s post-independence industrial ambitions with the political and economic changes that followed. Its presence in Paris brings that history into a new setting, inviting visitors to consider the consequences of industrial decline and the decisions that determine which structures are preserved and which are discarded.

The pavilion is intended to function as more than an artwork to be viewed. It will serve as a classroom and a space for performances and drawing classes, allowing the structure to support new activities while retaining evidence of its past.

For Mahama, repair does not mean returning something to an untouched original state. The marks of damage, wear and restoration remain part of the work. They offer a way to examine historical gaps and consider how societies might confront difficult aspects of their past rather than erase them.

Bringing Public Life Into the Museum

Red Clay, Tamale, 2025 | Photograph by Ernest Sackitey, courtesy of Red Clay.

The exhibition also reflects Mahama’s longstanding interest in making art spaces places for public participation. In Tamale, he established the Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art, Red Clay and Nkrumah Voli-ni. These spaces support exhibitions, research, educational activities and public gatherings, connecting contemporary art with community life.

With The Harvest Season, Mahama brings aspects of this approach to Fondation Cartier. Talks, performances, workshops and other activities will take place alongside the exhibition, encouraging visitors to engage with the works through discussion and shared experiences.

The aim is to create opportunities for people who may not regularly visit contemporary art museums to encounter the exhibition and participate in its activities. The works therefore function not only as objects of artistic presentation but also as starting points for conversations about history, labour, education and the role of cultural institutions.

The exhibition also challenges narrow expectations of contemporary art from Africa. By bringing complex installations and public programmes into a major Paris institution, Mahama places Ghanaian artistic practices within wider conversations about industrial history, cultural memory and the future of museums.

A Collective Approach to Art and Repair

Alongside Mahama’s work, The Harvest Season features nine artists and collectives connected to Ghana’s art scene: Dorothy Akpene Amenuke, Gideon Appah, James Barnor, Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise (CATPC), Courage Dzidula Kpodo, Postbox Ghana, Zohra Opoku, Tjaša Rener and Feda Wardak.

Their participation reflects Mahama’s interest in collaboration and the value of creating opportunities for artists to work together. His experience with the Black Star Lines Collective, which grew out of relationships among university professors, students and other affiliates, helped shape his thinking about shared resources and collective practice.

This approach is also visible in the exhibition’s emphasis on public activity. While Mahama’s installations provide a central framework, the wider program creates opportunities for different artistic voices and audiences to meet.

The exhibition suggests that repair can extend beyond the physical restoration of objects and buildings. It can also involve rebuilding relationships, sharing knowledge and creating conditions in which people can work together.

What Can Be Built From What Remains?

Mahama’s work in Tamale continues to explore how abandoned structures and overlooked sites can serve new purposes. One example involves an unused cemetery where Eastern European engineers involved in constructing grain silos in the city were buried. After efforts to obtain the land through the state proved difficult, traditional chiefs with authority over the land granted it to him for transformation into a public space.

The project reflects a central question in Mahama’s practice: how can places associated with neglect or forgotten histories be brought back into community life?

That question runs through The Harvest Season. The restored stools, reassembled factory and abandoned bottles all carry evidence of previous lives, but their histories do not determine what they can become. Through repair and reuse, Mahama creates opportunities to reconsider their significance and imagine new functions for them.

At Fondation Cartier, these works bring Ghana’s cultural and industrial histories into conversation with an international audience. They also challenge the idea that progress requires societies to discard what is damaged or out of use.

The Harvest Season runs from 22 October 2026 to 28 February 2027 at Fondation Cartier in Paris.