After the RA in London, Kerry James Marshall's exhibition is at MAM in Paris

Kerry James Marshall - The Histories 

He is considered one of the most influential contemporary painters. 

Kerry James Marshall is an African American artist known for his large-scale compositions that centre Black people.

Last autumn, the Royal Academy in London had a major restrospective of his work. 

His painting are now on show in Paris in a gigantic series of display at Musée d'Art Moderne (MAM), Paris 16eme.

The core collection and artworks are the same, travelled from London through Zurich to Paris, but the layout and experience differ due to the architecture of each venue. 

The Royal Academy featured an enfilade of rooms with traditional sight lines, whereas the Paris installation at Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris displays the works against white walls with a linear, single-path flow.

I knew some of his work, but had missed the show at the Royal Academy, and it's a pure delight to see the show's version at MAM. it's immense, intense, mesmerising, still provocative.

Critics describe how the artist "plays with reflections in mirrors" and mostly re-paint enormous parts of the history of art.

 

Marshall was born in Birmingham, Alabama, grew up in the Watts neighbourhood of Los Angeles, and lived in Chicago, Illinois.

 

His life path is often described as "deeply intertwined with locations that serve as symbols of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements." 

This exhibition is the most extensive retrospective in Europe dedicated to this major painter of Black identity. 

It offers an incisive overview comprising 70 monumental works, including a striking new series on the subject of slavery, created specifically for this show.

“As necessary as it is unmissable” -  The Guardian

There is much more to say, but best is to see it for yourself... 

-

On show until 24 January 2027. 

Ibrahim Mahama at Fondation Cartier, Paris: My favourite exhibition of the season

 

A Ghanaian glass factory, built by the first president of the first African independent country, Kwame Nkrumah, transformed into an art centre, then documented in films and transplanted into the heart of Paris... That's the premice of this giant art installation created by Ibrahim Mahama, who also curates other rooms with the work of incredibly talented young Ghanaian artists.

'The Harvest Season' is a mesmerising promise, delightfully presented at the new Fondation Cartier, in Paris. I absolutely loved it. It shows what contemporary art can do, really. Not to be missed! 

For Fondation Cartier, Ibrahim Mahama has imagined a living entity in resonance with the art centre he has founded in Tamale, northern Ghana. 

Born 1987 in Tamale, Ghana, Mahama  has gained international recognition with installations made from collected materials, archives, and fragments of industrial heritage, which he reactivates to shape new imaginaries. 

Since the 2010s, he has developed a body of work that explores Ghana’s colonial and postcolonial legacies. 

The poetic of workers

Drawing on his country’s industrial and commercial history, Mahama explores the circulation of goods, the transmission of craftsmanship and the preservation of heritage. 

His work also highlights political, social, and economic continuities and ruptures, with particular attention paid to infrastructure, traces of the past, and collective dynamics.

Filmic experiments

Collective creativity on a high note

This exhibition is on an unprecedented scale in France of Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama, but it's also  accompanied by nine associate artists and collectives: Dorothy Akpene Amenuke, Gideon Appah, James Barnor, Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise, Courage Dzidula Kpodo & Postbox Ghana, Zohra Opoku, Tjaša Rener, Feda Wardak.

With these associate artists, Mahama occupies all of the Fondation Cartier’s new space, with site-specific works, along with new versions of a selection of his iconic installations.

-

“It is in the past that we can excavate the potential of the future. The future isn’t something that just ‘exists’ somewhere, it also lives in our past memories, in the form of unrealised futures.” - Ibrahim Mahama

"This exhibition is essentially an ambitious, ultra-idealistic group show of West African art," The Guadian wrote. "It is art exhibition as political utopianism."

His collaborative approach is unique: "he’s saying collective action, community, togetherness, that’s how we’ll build a future."

If this visit does not make you want to book a one-way ticket to Accra, we might not need to meet... 

-

On view until Sunday 28 February 2027