Visitors to London’s Barbican Centre this month will find its lakeside facade swathed in a magnificent magenta fabric, dramatically taming the grey brutalist architecture. Resembling a billowing pavilion or awning, the exterior has been transformed by a vast expanse of pink-purple striped material, embroidered with garments that tumble exuberantly down the face of the building. “The building is very masculine and I wanted something that would somehow soften it,” says Ibrahim Mahama, the Ghanaian artist behind this textile takeover.
Based in the northern city of Tamale, Mahama, 36, has gained international renown for enveloping buildings in curtains of tattered jute sacks stitched together. Made in south-east Asia, these sacks are used in Ghana to transport cocoa beans abroad, then reused domestically for hauling rice, maize and charcoal. Mahama exchanges new sacks for old ones, which he prizes for the memories, scars and toil embedded in the material. He has covered theatres, ministries and museums at home and abroad in these jute skins, a gesture that invites the viewers to reflect on work, migration and the inequities of global trade.
