IBRAHIM MAHAMA: A SHEA GARDEN : A collaboration between Galleria Barovier&Toso and Apalazzogallery

Stripped of its doors and windows, a compact, low-ceilinged space becomes part of an installation, to be viewed from outside through the open frames. The floor is covered in a field of broken terracotta, from which intact vessels emerge like flowers. The objects come from northern Ghana, containers for grain and other goods, alongside spherical forms pierced with holes, used as chicken feeders. Their forms have been translated into transparent Murano glass, luminous and weightless against the dense, opaque clay, the two materials coexisting, growing from the same ground. Rooted in the traditional songs of northern Ghanaian women, the names of the works bring together oral memory, local language and the material culture of labour.

The title 'A Shea Garden' anchors the work in the dry savannah of northern Ghana, where the shea tree has sustained communities for centuries. Its nuts are processed into shea butter for cooking, medicine and trade; its fruit pulp eaten fresh during the hunger months of the early rainy season. The harvesting and processing of shea has long been women's work - knowledge passed between generations, as much as the vessels that held it. By framing the installation as a garden, Mahama invokes something that does not sustain itself without human care - a space of cultivated knowledge that, if left untended, slowly disappears.

The installation connects to an adjacent gallery space presenting drawings and Polaroids, all made specifically for this project, the latter marking a recent development in Mahama's practice, explored through his collaboration with the 20x24 Polaroid Project. Together, the two spaces enact a conversation between two ancient traditions facing erasure: Ghanaian terracotta practice and Murano glassmaking - gardens that must be tended to survive.