In Naples, the journey takes the form of three large boats. They do not sail, nor are they moored: they stand upright, partially immersed in the pavement of Piazza Municipio, like impossible apparitions facing the port. This is Voyageur, a new public art intervention by Ibrahim Mahama, commissioned by the City of Naples and on view from September 21 to November 18, 2026.

Created using traditional Ghanaian models and techniques, the three vessels reach approximately five, seven, and eight meters in height. Their presence radically alters the perception of the square designed by Álvaro Siza, introducing an element that is at once foreign to the architectural setting and deeply connected to the history of the place. Facing the port, the boats establish an ideal bridge between West Africa and the Mediterranean, two geographies linked for centuries by trade routes, migration, exchange, and conflict.

The journey itself is at the heart of the work. The title Voyageur evokes the figure of someone who sets out, crosses a space, and searches for somewhere else. Yet Mahama complicates this premise: his boats are motionless, unable to make the crossing they evoke. They become images of suspended movement, but also of permanence and memory.

Labor, the circulation of goods, migration, and the memories embedded in materials recur throughout the Ghanaian artist’s practice. In Naples, these themes acquire particular resonance. The vessels may evoke contemporary journeys across the Mediterranean, as well as the dramatic dimension of those crossings and of those who never reach the shore. At the same time, they can be read as sails caught in stillness: presences that have ceased to navigate without relinquishing the idea of the journey.

It is this ambivalence that makes Voyageur an open-ended work, inviting different interpretations. The three boats are at once wrecks and possibilities, monuments to memory and images of departure. “They are boats that do not sail, but stand upright in the space of the city,” Mahama explains. “They carry with them the idea of movement and, at the same time, that of something that remains.”

For curator Vincenzo Trione, the vessels heighten the almost metaphysical quality of Siza’s square: they can evoke the tragic fate of those who cross the Mediterranean, but also recall “sails raised to the wind.” This dual image makes the work a metaphor for hope and for the possibility of creating new paths toward coexistence.

With Voyageur, Naples continues a series of major public art interventions that began in 2023 with works by Michelangelo Pistoletto, Gaetano Pesce, and Jaume Plensa. Art once again takes over a central urban space, not as a mere decorative element, but as a way of engaging with the present.

IBRAHIM MAHAMA
VOYAGEUR
Piazza Municipio, Naples
September 21 – November 18, 2026