Ibrahim Mahama, Out of Bounds (2014)

“Ibrahim Mahama (b. 1987) will probably find his name in the dwindling list of artists who would be missed when contemporary art, as we have it today, gives way to another regime already pressing into our view from postausterity and postpandemic pasts and futures.

“Mahama’s Out of Bounds walk-through scenario echoes the propitiatory walk of Dante (the living), guided by Virgil (the departed), through the iron-colored valley of the Inferno, toward Purgatory and Paradise. Furthermore, the walk-through scenario seems to bring Dante’s Divine Comedy trilogy into a surprising tête-à-tête with Okwui Enwezor’s troika of curatorial filters: ‘The Garden of Disorder’ (Inferno); ‘Capital: A Live Reading’ (Purgatory); ‘Liveness: On Epic Duration” (Paradise).’    —kąrî’kạchä seid’ou, “On Stage-Crafting and State-Crafting Beyond Crisis: Ibrahim Mahama’s Word and Deed,” African Arts (Summer 2021)