LEARNING | NIRIN AT HOME: Ibrahim Mahama & Breaking Bread

Ibrahim Mahama
Born 1987 in Tamale, Ghana
Lives and works in Tamale, Accra and Kumasi, Ghana
Ibrahim Mahama’s spectacular installations of sewn charcoal sacks are the result of his investigation of the conditions of the body in relation to both architecture and history. The practice takes many forms and one of the final products – the art – is equally displayed in marketplaces thus defying the artefacts’ intrinsic value system.
Mahama produces the large draping surfaces by carefully assembling sacks imported by the Ghana Cocoa Board and repurposed by charcoal sellers. The sacks present patches, markings and traces of traders’ names and locations on their rough brown skin, which map out the many transits they endure as vessels of commodities. Wrapped around heaps of merchandise in the marketplace or embracing the contours of a museum building, the spreads of jute fibres become an oversized socio-political inquiry of the origin of materials, referencing what is normally hidden for the sake of concept or form. Ibrahim Mahama denudes the transits and ownerships of jute sacks along their lives as porters of goods, rendering visible the mechanisms of trade which define the world’s economy.
For the 22nd Biennale of Sydney, Mahama presents a largescale immersive installation, dressing the entirety of the interior Turbine Hall at Cockatoo Island with jute sacks. A crowded patchwork of rich, brown colour and rough and smooth planes, together their hardened surfaces mime the gritty materiality and architecture of the former shipyard and penal colony, to reference and stir the histories of labor and incarceration laying dormant on the island. This work continues Mahama’s material investigation into labour, economic history and production. Taking an almost forensic approach, the artist sees the surfaces of these materials as holding and bearing the physical markers, smells and traces of the networks and industries they previously moved through. This installation differs from other projects in which the artist blankets the exterior architecture of public buildings. In covering the interior of the turbine hall, Mahama creates a conceptual space for us to walk inside, and from within which to consider our own relationship to the layered histories on display through a heightened, bodily engagement with the space. Once inside, we are consumed with the smell, texture, and sensation of the jute, inviting new ways of seeing and occupying this site, caked as it is in layers of divergent and complex histories.
Mahama also presents A Grain of Wheat at Artspace. The immersive installation comprises around 400 upright first aid stretchers dating from the Second World War, which the artist collected from a site near to a Refugee Camp in Athens. Found elements drawn from Ghana embellish the canvas of the stretchers to create an elongated ‘painting’, while aromatic smoked fish papers sourced from West African smokehouses conjure a spectrum of responses. The materials carry with them an explicit residue of their past, existing together archivally as a sensory monument hinting at pain and labour. By presenting them inside an exhibition space, the artist engages in a process of making-visible the histories of their production and circulation, an aesthetic mode which is at odds with the expectations of viewership formed within traditional gallery space.
Courtesy the artist.
Images | Ibrahim Mahama, 'No Friend but the Mountains' 2012-2020
Fish Curry
About the Fish Curry Recipe
This recipe is a culinary recognition of the influence of Cape Malay food on South African cuisine that came about as a result of the Dutch colonisation and subsequent slave trade in South East Asia. This resulted in many political prisoners in the region being brought to the Cape of South Africa to serve as political exiles, prisoners or as slaves, in the sixteenth century.
The exiles and slaves who ended up in the Cape of Good Hope came to be collectively known as Cape Malay though their origins could be traced to places such as Madagascar, Macau, the Dutch East Indies (today, Indonesia), Philippines, East Africa and India.
This mixture of cultures has resulted in a deep fusion of traditional cuisines in the Cape that touches and influences every aspect of the culture of food and food preparation in this region.
The fish curry recipe utilises spices and cooking methods that were introduced into this region by the forced migration of diverse cultures and people.
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Ingredients
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750 grams yellowtail or swordfish (around 10 - 12 pieces)
2 onions, sliced
Cooking oil for pan frying fish
1 tablespoon salt
Spice paste
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
5 teaspoons cumin seeds
Fresh curry leaves to taste
3cm piece of fresh ginger
1 garlic clove crushed
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
1 teaspoon poppy seeds
1 medium red chilli
½ teaspoon turmeric powder
Tomato and Capsicum pepper sauce
1 red capsicum
1 tablespoon black pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 ripe tomatoes
1 tablespoon salt
To finish
300 ml coconut cream
Fresh coriander as garnish
Juice of 1/2 lemon -
Method
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- Dry the fish pieces with a paper towel. Salt fish with 1 tsp salt at least an hour before cooking or salt it overnight, refrigerate and take out 1 hour before prep.
- Preheat oven to 200°C. Cut tomatoes and capsicum in half, remove seeds and membranes. Place on a large oven tray skin side up and drizzle with 1 tbsp salt, 1 tbsp black pepper and 2 tbsp olive oil. Roast in preheated oven until the skin blisters and turns black (about 10 minutes). After cooling, with your mortar and pestle or blender, grind the mix of tomatoes and bell peppers. Set aside sauce to use later.
- In a pan dry roast cumin seeds, coriander seeds, mustard seeds, & poppy seeds. After cooling, grind the spice to a powder using a mortar and pestle or blender. Add turmeric powder, red chilli, ginger & peeled garlic cloves and grind. Add a little water & grind to a smooth paste. Set aside to use later.
- In a frying pan heat cooking oil. Add the fish pieces side by side (you may have to cook in batches). Fry on medium heat for 2-3 minutes on each side until fish is browned evenly.
- Heat a deep saucepan with 2 tbsp oil. Add sliced onions and curry leaves, fry on medium heat until light brown. Add spice paste (if needed ½ tsp salt for taste) and cook, stirring frequently, for around 5 minutes or until fragrant. Stir in tomato/capsicum sauce, simmer until juices are reduced. Add coconut milk and bring to the boil. Reduce heat to low and cook for 4-5 minutes, or until reduced slightly.
- Add the fish gently and cook covered for around 15 minutes. Finish with by squeezing half of a lemon and garnished with chopped coriander.
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NIRIN AT HOME | Coffee Grounds
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Coffee Body Scrub
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Ingredients:
½ cup coffee grounds
½ cup brown sugar
15ml of coconut oil
1 tsp vanilla extractMix together and use in the bath or shower to exfoliate your skin.
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Air Freshener
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What you will need:
Stockings
String (something to tie off the stocking)
Funnel
Coffee groundsSteps:
Use knee high stockings, or cut full length stockings at about knee height, and stretch around the funnel.
Push the grounds to the foot of the stocking and create a ball shape.
Tie off using the string.
These can be placed in fridge to reduce food odour as well in other areas around the house or even your car! -
Fertiliser
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Sprinkle your used coffee grounds around your garden or in any plants you have around the home. Some minerals found in coffee, like nitrogen and calcium, are great for stimulating plant growth.
Share your work with us!
We’d love to see how you use these resources at home. Post your stories and photos on Instagram with the hashtag #NIRINathome.