Galleria Barovier&Toso, in collaboration with Apalazzogallery, presents 'A Shea Garden', a solo exhibition by Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama, known for monumental installations that map the hidden infrastructures of global trade and the enduring legacies of colonialism. Here Mahama turns to something more intimate: an installation of broken terracotta from which intact vessels rise like flowers — grain containers and spherical chicken feeders from his native northern Ghana, translated into luminous, empty forms in Murano glass. The title anchors the work in the landscape of the shea tree, whose harvesting and processing has long been women's work, knowledge passed between generations alongside the vessels that held it. Drawings and Polaroids made specifically for the project, marking a new development in Mahama's practice, accompany the glass works.
The catalogue by Mara Hofmann, Director of Galleria Barovier&Toso, traces the ancient belief that objects touched by significant forces carry memory and power, situating Mahama's work within a lineage of artists who transform materials of trade into monumental testimony. It examines his shift from large-scale installation to intimate object-making, and his parallel institution-building in Tamale, before turning to the glass vessels themselves, a conversation between two endangered traditions, Ghanaian terracotta-making and Murano glassblowing.