Igshaan Adams (b. 1982, Cape Town) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice interlaces the personal and political through materials, gesture, and form. Drawing upon his upbringing in Bonteheuwel—a racially segregated suburb shaped by apartheid’s spatial divisions—Adams’s woven and sculptural works transform humble materials such as rope, beads, and wire into intricate compositions that explore the entanglement of race, religion, sexuality, and memory. His practice often takes its cues from the patterned linoleum floors of domestic interiors, translating these familiar geometries into complex abstractions that register both intimacy and displacement.
Recently, Adams has expanded his exploration of mapping and trace into the realm of movement. His collaboration with Garage Dance Ensemble in O’okiep, in South Africa’s Northern Cape—his maternal family’s place of origin—has opened a new dialogue between weaving and dance. Through workshops with dancers, Adams devised a process in which bodies move across canvases laid atop painted linoleum, creating “dance prints” that record collective gestures of release and connection. Built up over successive performances, these layered imprints trace shared encounters and attempts to “dislodge accumulated and sedimentary psycho-imprints,” as Adams describes them.
