Ghanaian artist transforms the brutalist Barbican with Purple Hibiscus

The Barbican Centre has been draped in magenta fabric for an exhibition using traditional Ghanaian robes.

The first large-scale UK public commission by Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama, Purple Hibiscus, has transformed the Barbican’s famous Lakeside Terrace with around 2000 square metres of woven cloth.

The commission forms part of the exhibition Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art at Barbican Art Gallery, in Silk Street, Barbican, which will be open until May 26. 

Purple Hibiscus, named after Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s 2003 novel, is the work of hundreds of craftspeople from Tamale, in Ghana.

Together, these artists have woven and sewn fabric by hand to produce huge panels of pink and purple fabric that fit the brutalist planes of the Barbican’s Lakeside façade.

Embroidered onto the cloth are around 130 ‘batakaris’ – robes worn by Northern Ghanaian royals and ordinary people – which Mr Mahama has collected from communities across Northern Ghana. The robes are often saved by families over generations.

Mr Mahama said: “Collecting the individual smocks from communities can be quite challenging, but also opens up a portal of new formal aesthetics.”

The pieces are so large that the artist rented out the Tamale football stadium so the work could be spread out on the floor as hundreds of women from local sewing collectives stitched them together. 

Mr Mahama said: “Using the Alui Mahama sports stadium in Tamale as the primary studio space for the production of Purple Hibiscus allowed for us to organise the different layers of the work in ways we couldn’t have possibly imagined.

“The scale of the material forms needed some level of freedom, which the space gifted.”

Worn and bearing the traces of years of use, these smocks are testaments to the endurance of traditional belief systems.

Mr Mahama said he believes that his art should be connected to their local contexts and the lives within those communities. 

The Barbican Centre stands on the former Cripplegate parish, which was largely destroyed during the Second World War. 

A centre for the ‘rag trade’ in London, the area was sought out for the buying, selling and production of cloth. 

Shanay Jhaveri, head of visual arts at the Barbican, said: “At a time of increasing fracture and disharmony, Mahama, with this monumental site-specific artwork will transform the Barbican’s iconic Lakeside into a site and space for the commemoration of community, all achieved by the incredible capabilities and capacity of the human hand.”

Pictured top: Ibrahim Mahama’s Purple Hibiscus during installation at the Barbican, courtesy of Ibrahim Mahama, Red Clay Tamale, Barbican Centre, London and White Cube (Picture: Pete Cadman, Barbican Centre)