Igshaan Adams: Weaving the Body’s Archive
Igshaan Adams has long occupied a distinctive place in contemporary art through a practice that moves fluidly between weaving, sculpture, performance and installation. Born in Bonteheuwel, a township on the outskirts of Cape Town shaped by the spatial violence of apartheid, Adams draws deeply from personal experience to create works that challenge inherited ideas of race, sexuality and religion.
Igshaan Adams, Within Grid Lines, 2025. Courtesy the artist, Thomas Dane Gallery, and blank projects. © Igshaan Adams
His intricate surfaces act as palimpsests, carrying layers of memory that are concealed and revealed in equal measure. As the artist has reflected, “I am interested in the personal stories recorded on the surface. What is recorded is not necessarily always a factual account but can be what is imagined, a combination of myth-making and meaning-making.” For Unsettling Dust: The Body’s Archive at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Adams extends this language into a new and deeply collaborative direction...
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Image Credits:
Lead: Igshaan Adams, Midday Sun Makes Little Difference, 2022 (detail). © Igshaan Adams. Photo: Mario Todeschini / Casey Kaplan Gallery
All further images as credited in captions.