Design Indaba alumnus, Ibrahim Mahama has been enlisted to help the Swiss museum celebrate their first major renovation by wrapping the building in his famed Jute installation ahead of its reopening in June 2025.
Mahama, a Ghanaian artist, uses his work to draw attention to the Eurocentric legacy of the institution, using repurposed jute sacks, originally used in transporting commodities from Africa to the rest of the world. The sacks bear marks from their varied uses, symbolizing the intertwined histories of trade, labor, and colonialism. By wrapping the Kunsthalle with these materials, Mahama provokes dialogue of the the ecological and human costs of global capitalism, particularly in the context of Ghana's cocoa industry and its colonial ties to Switzerland.
“Visually and materially, the jute sack represents for Mahama, the history of Ghana’s post-independence era. It also represents a material onto which various aspects of global capitalism unfold. First and foremost, the jute sack becomes a witness of the frantic pace of what many are calling disaster capitalism: the trade of goods, and the movement of materials and their destructive carbon footprint, but also the overall profile of extraction and exploitation or resources in the African continent” – Kunstahalle Bern
Mahama's intervention serves as both homage and critique, layering past and present narratives onto the museum's façade
