Ibrahim Mahama, Transfer(s)

Ibrahim Mahama (b.1987) lives and works in Accra, Kumasi and Tamale, in Ghana. His politically-driven practice explores themes such as the contradictions inherent in economic globalization, labour relations, and creating inclusive, sustainable infrastructure in conditions of hopelessness. His work has been included in numerous international exhibitions such as the Sharjah Biennial 15 (2023), the 22nd Biennale of Sidney (2020), the 56th and 58th Biennale di Venezia (2015, 2019), the 6th Lubumbashi Biennale in the Democratic Republic of Congo (2019) and documenta 14 (Kassel, Athens, 2017). Various diverse major solo exhibitions have featured the work of Ibrahim Mahama, including Garden of Scars, oude kerk, Amsterdam (2022); In-Between the World and Dreams, University of Michigan Museum of Art (2020); Parliament of Ghosts, The Whitworth, University of Manchester (2019); a straight line through the carcass of history. 1918-1945. 2015-2018, daadgalerie Berlin (2018); Coal Market, Schloss Strünkede, Emschertal-Museum Herne (2018); Fracture, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel (2016). Mahama is the artistic director of the 35 th edition of the Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts (2023). He is the founder of SCCA Tamale, Red Clay and Nkrumah Volini—sister institutions engaged in hosting cultural, techno- scientific, and artistic programming in Tamale, Ghana.

Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh is a curator and critic based in Kumasi, Ghana. He is a key member of the blaxTARLINES coalition whose work is compelled by the radical hope proposed by karî’kạchä seid’ou to “transform art from the status of commodity to gift”. Ohene-Ayeh’s work in the fields of pedagogy, criticism, curating, and art stretches across teaching at the Department of Painting & Sculpture, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), to running the annual peer-led, schizo-pedagogical, and inoperative art school project called CritLab since 2020 as a member Exit Frame Collective in Ghana. He also co-organises Kelas Bareng— an experimental educational project managed between Gudskul, blaxTARLINES, Städelschule, and FiK - Filmkunstskolen i Kabelvåg which featured at documenta fifteen (2022). Ohene-Ayeh is co-curator of the 12th edition of Bamako Encounters: Biennale of African Photography (2019-2020); Akutia: Blindfolding the Sun and the Poetics of Peace (A Retrospective of Agyeman Ossei ‘Dota’) (2020-2021); TRANSFER(S), Ibrahim Mahama’s solo exhibition commissioned by Kunsthalle Osnabrück in Germany (2023); and the 35th edition of the Ljubljana Graphic Arts Biennale with Exit Frame Collective (2023).

Bettina Klein (*1970 in Wadern, Germany) is an art historian, independent curator, and author based in Berlin. She holds an M.A. in Art History and French Literature (FU Berlin, 1997)

From 2013 to 2018, she was Head of the Visual Arts at the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program. She was curator at the Centre Européen d'Actions Artistiques Contemporaines in Strasbourg, France (2009-2012) and lecturer at weißensee kunsthochschule berlin (2011- 2012). She curated numerous exhibitions as well as projects in public space, recently among others:

Restless Monuments Berlin, interventions in public space (2021-2023); Peilung, series of encounters with Ukrainian artists, filmmakers and scientists, co-curated with Lada Nakonechna, daadgalerie, Berlin (2022-2023); Das Erscheinen eines jeden in der Menge, Galerie im Schloss Bellevue, Berlin (2021); Ibrahim Mahama, a straight line through the carcass of history. 1918–1945. 2015-2018, daadgalerie, Berlin (2018)); Restless Monuments, co-curated with Naz Cuguoğlu, Zilberman Gallery, Istanbul (2018); Parlament der Pflanzen, daadgalerie, Berlin (2017); Rayyane Tabet, Kopf hoch! Mut hoch! Und Humor hoch!, daadgalerie Berlin (2017); Nouvelles de l’Île des Bienheureux, Musée du Château des Ducs de Wurtemberg, Montbéliard, France (2016); Blind Spot, Mykola Ridnyi & Serhij Zhadan, Fassadenprojekt KuLE, Auguststraße (2015); Last Sighting, daadgalerie, Berlin (2015); The Ukrainians, daadgalerie, Berlin (2014).