Viewing Ibrahim Mahama: Parliament of Ghosts at Ibraaz

At the newly opened arts centre Ibraaz, Parliament of Ghosts, is a striking installation by Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama, who topped the Art Review’s Power 100 as the most influential person in the contemporary art world this year. He is the first African person to take the number one spot. Parliament of Ghosts challenges the way museums—and history itself—are imagined. Framed within Ibraaz’s refurbished Grade II–listed building at 93 Mortimer Street, the work transforms the former gentleman’s club into a “living archive”: a space where material traces of empire, migration, and memory are reactivated for the present.

At the heart of the installation lies a floor constructed from timber reclaimed from the colonial railway—rail that once facilitated the extraction and transport of goods from Ghana under the British Empire. Across this reclaimed floor stand 75 chairs contributed by households across Ghana—everyday seats once used in domestic spaces, now ceremonially arranged in semi-circles, their traditional hierarchical connotations stripped away. Cushions made from fabrics and leathers sourced from a local Accra market soften the austerity of the wood. Surrounding shelves are buckled under stacks of jute sacks, a sober nod to the labour and trade that underpinned colonial economic power.

By relocating Ghanaian material and history to London, Mahama enacts what he calls “reverse restitution.” Rather than seeking to return objects to former colonies, he inserts their material legacies into the heart of the empire’s old centre, demanding an encounter with the past often suppressed or forgotten. “Parliament of Ghosts,” also establishes Ibraaz as a new kind of cultural space in London, not just for display — but for reckoning, re-imagining, and collective reflection.