Parliament of Ghosts

The inauguration of Ibraaz’s permanent home at 93 Mortimer Street is marked by Ibrahim Mahama’s Parliament of Ghosts, an installation that reconsiders the function of the museum itself, offering a living archive in which histories of empire, migration, and collective assembly are reactivated for the present. 

Mahama’s practice is grounded in the material and social histories of Ghana. For this work, he has transported timber reclaimed from the colonial railway, once central to the operations of British Empire. Laid as the floor of the Majlis – a space in Ibraaz where a synagogue and German Athenaeum once stood – this wood provides a literal and symbolic ground for new forms of gathering. 

Ceremonially arranged around the room are 75 chairs, each drawn from households across Ghana. Once signifiers of authority within patriarchal structures, they are here reassembled into a parliament that privileges presence and dialogue over power. Cushions – made from fabrics and leathers sourced at the local market where Mahama’s studio is based – soften and animate the dark woods, while jute sacks fill the shelves around the Majlis, invoking the toil of trade, which underpins economic power through the ages. 

By relocating Ghanaian material to London, Mahama enacts a form of ‘reverse restitution’. Rather than returning objects to former colonies, he inserts their material histories into the former imperial centre. 

The gesture unsettles conventional narratives of restitution, asking instead how institutions might cultivate shared spaces of reckoning. Mahama’s Parliament of Ghosts is a new lining inside the white, ornate neoclassical architecture. This schism is history in its multiple complexities. 

The Majlis – traditionally a place of hospitality and deliberation in Arab and Muslim cultures – here becomes a platform for invention and exchange. A weekly public programme of lectures, performances, book launches, and music complete Parliament of Ghosts as a site of togetherness, remembering, and speculation. A haunted host placed in service of future solidarities.