Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama has been named the most influential person in the art world on ArtReview’s annual power list, the first time an African has topped the ranking. Best known for large-scale works made from found and repurposed materials — textile remnants, old hospital beds, decommissioned train carriages and other discarded objects — Mahama was chosen by a global panel of judges convened by the magazine.
Mahama, who lives and works in Tamale in northern Ghana, said the recognition felt humbling. He recalled first noticing the list as a student at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in 2011, when Ai Weiwei headed the chart. Mahama said he hopes the accolade will help younger Ghanaian artists see themselves as full participants in contemporary art conversations rather than peripheral to them.
Mark Rappolt, ArtReview’s editor-in-chief, described Mahama’s elevation as part of a broader shift in power across the art world, reflecting changes in global finance and influence and the longstanding role of the MENA region as a crossroads between east and west. The list’s top 10 includes several figures from the Middle East and Africa: No. 2 is Sheikha Al‑Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al‑Thani, chair of Qatar Museums; last year’s No. 1, Sheikha Hoor al‑Qasimi of the Sharjah Art Foundation, appears at No. 3. Others in the top 10 are Egyptian artist Wael Shawky (No. 4), Singapore’s Ho Tzu Nyen (No. 5), Americans Amy Sherald (No. 6) and Kerry James Marshall (No. 7), scholar and writer Saidiya Hartman (No. 8), investigative collective Forensic Architecture (No. 9), and photographer Wolfgang Tillmans (No. 10).
Mahama’s recent projects have drawn wide attention. Represented by Apalazzo Gallery and White Cube, he staged Songs About Roses at the Edinburgh festival, a multi-part work about the British-built railway in Ghana (1898–1923) that critics praised for its imaginative handling of historical memory. He also wrapped the Barbican Centre in London with roughly 2,000 square metres of bright pink fabric hand-stitched in Ghana, a project realized by assembling the enormous textile on a football field back home.
In 2019 Mahama opened the Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art in Tamale, a 900-square-metre facility that serves as exhibition space, library, residency programme, archive and studio. Rappolt pointed out that many of the people on this year’s list run local initiatives as well as international projects, and he emphasized that Mahama’s influence stems from sustained community engagement rather than solitary celebrity.
The ranking was compiled by thirty anonymous experts from around the world and is part of a list ArtReview has published annually for 24 years.