"The series of sculptures and drawings on view imaginatively connected Ghana's crumbling medical and railway infrastructures, highlighting the ways in which colonialism and postcolonialism have shaped the movement of people and goods while leaving their traces upon the body. Sometimes, this was painfully literal, as in the case of the migrant laborers who bore tattoos of their own names to ensure their corpses could be identified if they died while building the railways designed for shipping commodities;"
"Despite their specificity, these sculptures also ached with a loss that felt as universal as death itself (or the increasingly extreme ravages of inequality): Recounting how his own brother died in a hospital whose MRI machine had been broken for fifteen or so years, Mahama noted that his works are an indictment of the "deteriorating health care system not just in Ghana but across the world.""
The installations connect Ghana's crumbling medical and railway infrastructures, highlighting how colonialism and postcolonialism shaped movement of people and goods and left traces on bodies. Migrant laborers once tattooed their names so corpses could be identified; worn leather "skins" stripped from decommissioned train seats and covered with names of deceased patients and displaced persons were laid over rusted hospital beds. The sculptures evoke a universal sense of loss and extreme inequality. The artist recounted his brother died in a hospital whose MRI machine had been broken for about fifteen years, framing the works as an indictment of a deteriorating global health-care system. Access to health care is both political and systemic.
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