Ibrahim Mahama and Pilotti: A Shared Language of Making

Contemporary art often feels disconnected from the real world. This new collaboration shows how human hands, labor, and shared histories fundamentally shape culture. The project titled “Failed Industrial Utopias”, a partnership between the Italian collective Pilotti and Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama. The project debuted publicly during Paris Art Week in October. At its core, the project tracks the physical journey of an industrial embroidery machine from Italy to Ghana. This partnership symbolises a cultural exchange that connects industrial ambitions of the past while building future communities.

Mattia Varini and Jan Grombirik founded Pilotti in 2022. The artistic project operates out of “Confezioni Grazia”, a tailoring workshop founded in Brescia in the 1960s by Giulia Pilotti. By using leftover textiles and industrial machinery from the factory, Pilotti crafts custom clothing capsules that turn into wearable records of craftsmanship.

For its latest initiative, Pilotti partners with Ibrahim Mahama’s Red Clay, a community art compound and cultural incubator in Tamale, Ghana. Together they build a living infrastructure that goes far beyond a traditional art exhibition. IRK spoke with Ibrahim Mahama to explore how this collaboration began, the labor behind it, and where it goes next.

In Conversation with Artist Ibrahim Mahama

How did you first connect with Pilotti and when did it become a real project?

Ibrahim Mahama: Before my conversations with Pilotti, I met Camilla Alberti at the Malta Biennale. We discussed bringing an industrial embroidery machine from her family’s factory, Ricamificio Fontana, to Tamale and Red Clay. Through :”Failed Industrial Utopias”, that idea became concrete. The machine was donated by Ricamificio Fontana and Camilla Alberti, passed through Confezioni Grazia, and transferred to Red Clay. What began as a conversation around a machine became a way to connect different productive histories and communities between Italy and Ghana.

How does this project connect to Ghana’s industrial history?

Ibrahim Mahama: Ghana’s post-independence history was shaped by a strong belief in industrialisation as a path to economic autonomy. Many of those infrastructures were later abandoned or transformed, and this history is central to my work. What interests me in “Failed Industrial Utopias” is placing this history in dialogue with northern Italy, which experienced a major industrial expansion during roughly the same period. Both contexts contain ideas about production, labor, and the futures that industry once promised. The embroidery machine physically connects these histories, asking what an industrial object can become when it moves into a new context.

What do you hope people at Red Clay will make with the machine first?

Ibrahim Mahama: Camilla Alberti will be the first artist to work with the machine at Red Clay, developing an artwork through its first artistic activation in Tamale. Beyond this initial project, I hope the machine becomes an open resource. I am excited to see what artists, technicians, and students around Red Clay will invent. The most interesting outcome may be something none of us can predict today.

Who will learn to use it, and who will teach them?

Ibrahim Mahama: The knowledge around the machine will gradually be shared with artists, technicians, and students at Red Clay. The machine carries a technical history from Ricamificio Fontana and Confezioni Grazia. Part of the project is understanding how this knowledge can travel and be adapted locally. We are still working on the structure of the training, so we are trying not to define too rigidly who is the teacher and who is the student. Ideally, it is a mutual exchange rather than a one-directional transfer.

 In a year, what would you like to see happening at Red Clay with this machine?

Ibrahim Mahama: I would like the machine to stop feeling like something that arrived from Italy. I want it to become part of Red Clay’s everyday infrastructure: used by artists and technicians to produce artworks, experiments, and forms of production we haven’t even imagined yet. For me, the success of the project would be if the machine begins to generate its own relationships, knowledge and possibilities in Tamale. At that point, it no longer belongs only to the story of its transfer. It has started a new life.

Culture Built Around Shared Meals

The project’s ethos came alive at the Paris launch in a private studio in the Marais. During the event, guests gathered for a shared meal that celebrated both cultures. Together, they enjoyed Risotto allo Zafferano, which Chef Dee prepared using a traditional recipe from Giulia Pilotti. Alongside Dawadawa Jollof Rice, cooked by Ghanaian chef Khadija Iddi Yussif.

Meanwhile, guests sat on cushions that artisans made from surplus fabrics leftover from Italian workshop production. At the same time, several attendees wore Pilotti’s capsule collection. In doing so, they turned the clothing into direct proof of factory labor and real craftsmanship.

Ultimately, “Failed Industrial Utopias “offers a refreshing template for international collaboration. By tracing the movement of machines, textiles, and human hands, Pilotti and Ibrahim Mahama’s Red Clay prove an important point. When communities re-anchor industrial history, they transform past relics into living engines for tomorrow.