Igshaan Adams’ practice encompasses weaving, sculpture, installation, and performance, creating works that trace the movement of bodies through space and time, reflecting personal and collective experiences. Born in Bonteheuwel, a historically segregated township in Cape Town, Adams grew up during the final decade of apartheid, when racial classifications enforced systemic inequality. His practice draws upon the racial fissures of South Africa’s past, and these histories are translated into intricately layered tapestries and sculptures that function as archives, mapping the traces of individuals who traversed social and geographical boundaries. Central to Adams’s working method is an engagement with the body as a site of memory, movement, and transformation. His works explore how movement and dance serve as vessels for embodied ancestral knowledge, as well as a means of processing trauma, resilience, and resistance. Collaboration lies at the heart of Adams’s artistic process. His works are handwoven with a group of weavers in his Cape Town studio, including relatives and members of his local community. Through the interweaving of threads, fibers, beads, and found objects, Adams constructs richly layered surfaces that are at once intimate and expansive, transforming personal narratives into meditations on memory, movement, and belonging.
Adams’ recent solo exhibitions took place at Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (2026), Mudam Luxembourg (2026), Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (2025), Hill Art Foundation (New York, 2025), ARoS Aarhus Art Museum (2025), The Hepworth Wakefield (2024), Institute of Contemporary Art Boston (2024), Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Cape Town, 2022), Art Institute of Chicago (2022), Kunsthalle Zurich (2022), Hayward Gallery (London, 2021), SCAD Museum of Art (Savannah, 2020), and Iziko South African National Gallery (Cape Town, 2018). His work was also exhibited at Museum of Modern Art (New York, 2025), LACMA (Los Angeles, 2025 & 2023), Bukhara Biennial (2025), National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa, 2024), National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C., 2024), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam, 2024), Barbican Art Gallery (London, 2024), São Paulo Biennial (2023), and the Main Exhibition of the 59th Venice Biennale “The Milk of Dreams” (2022).
Adams currently lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa.
