‘The idea is to reverse the capital,’ Mahama told The New York Times in September on the occasion of his exhibition at White Cube New York. The gallery was showing A SPELL OF GOOD THINGS, an installation featuring old hospital beds and upholstery taken from derelict railway carriages, as well as charcoal drawings depicting the construction of Ghanaian railways by men exploited under British rule. The artist’s comment relates to his interest in taking money out of the West, through the sale of such sculptures, and funnelling it back into Tamale, the region of northern Ghana where the artist was raised and still lives. There he has built three institutions, Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art, Red Clay Studio and Nkrumah Volini, each with its own programme of exhibitions and education initiatives. This reparative practice has won him fans: institutional shows this year include Fruitmarket, Edinburgh; Barbican Centre, London; and Mönchehaus Museum Goslar; while newly commissioned works were presented at the Lagos Biennial and Desert X AlUla, Saudi Arabia.