By the time last Sunday came around we were down to our last day in Tamale. The plan was to first visit Red Clay Studio. This is another gallery and studio done by Ibrihim Mahama. We visited his SCCA space just the day before.
https://blurt.blog/blurtafrica/@leifasaur/tamale-weekend-visit-day-2-scca-gallery
After the studio we would drop by Dzigbordi's house again and say good by the the family before going to the bus station in the early afternoon.
The studio is quite close to her house so we made our way there by yellow yellow. I was excited because I had heard a lot about this place from Dzigbordi and I remembered some buzz on social media when they were moving some of the airplanes through the streets of Tamale to the space.
When we first arrived we noticed a lot of guys around working cutting out some pictures. The picture was an overhead view of a new project Ibrihim is working on with a independence era grain silo in another part of Tamale. He likes to do repeating images and shapes much like the giant jut bag tapestries he got famous for doing on buildings. It looks like they will be stitching these images together in a similar way. We will see what comes of it.
The next stop was the archives room. Here Dzigbordi snapped one od me looking at some photographes. Theese are of identity tattoos given to migrant workers from the north. In Accra they are known as Kayaye girls, they are usually teenage girls that travel from the north to work carrying things in the markets of Accra. There has always been a development imbalance between the south and the north of Ghana going back to colonial times where it was engineered that way to create a labor imbalance also. So many northerns come to the south looking for greener pastures and they are used as cheap labor.
Pictures of colonial era railroad infrastructure in the country. There is a lot of focus here on industrial and vintage things.
Another identity tattoo.
Some old blue prints of a railway station.
A wall of vintage corporate and government records and much older leather scrolls.
Dzigbordi with some old leather scrolls.
More vintage records and archives.
More vintage train blueprints.
The archive space.
This is an installation by Olafur Eliasson, called "Tell Me About a Miraculous Invention." It is an interactive work where two lights and a mirror in a room create some interesting moving shadows and effects.
Some of the space is still under construction. This will be like a parliament house when it is down with pit seating all around the room. For now it has filled with water because the roof is not finished.
Dzigbordi strikes a pose befoe we walk out into the field to check out the airplanes.
Dzigbordi making friends with a big bird. There are about 6 planes in all. They have all been moved here from the airport by road and reconstructed. Some have now been fitted with AC and converted to classrooms like the big jets. They use them for workshops and kids art classes.
A nicely framed portrait.
A former private plane.
Looking out the door of the very vintage plane.
This plane was a WWII fighter plane that had since been converted to a small luxury passenger plane before finding its way here. It is said to have traveled to over 60 countries.
We made our way back inside to see a few more exhibits. This work was done much like the negative on film and using similar dyes on glass.
This is some work that was done by hand embroidery. The rest of the exhibits were some short films with different focus by some European artists.
It will be interesting to see how this place grows and what it is like when construction is finished. I will hope to get back again to see it then. Thanks for reading and viewing.
Shot with Canon M10 DSLR
Beautiful pictures from your travels. I was in Tamale last year but didn’t see all these. I hope to go on a proper Tamale tour sometime later
You should it is a good place to visit. Much more relaxed than Accra. The bus ride there is just hell.
Yea. Long hours. Was in the bus the whole night, and I couldn’t really sleep