Igshaan Adams’s (b. 1982, Cape Town, South Africa) 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 to a Muslim father and a Christian mother of Nama-Khoisan descent, Adams was raised as a mixed-race person during the final decade of apartheid, when racial classifications enforced systemic inequality and segregation. His practice draws upon the racial fissures and social realities of South Africa’s past. These histories are translated into intricately layered tapestries that function as both 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 center on how movement and dance serve as vessels for embodied knowledge and ancestral inheritance, as well as a means of processing trauma, resilience, and resistance. Adams is further informed by his interest in Sufism, a mystical practice within Islam that emphasizes the interconnectedness of the internal and external.
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 was a participating artist in the 59th Venice Biennale— “The Milk of Dreams”. His 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), The Institute of Contemporary Art Boston (2024), Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Cape Town, 2022), The 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).
Adams currently lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa.
