Igshaan Adams: Between Then and Now

Igshaan Adams’ works are generous – in the way an invitation to someone’s mother’s house is. It doesn’t really matter who you are or how you got there; what matters is that you received an invite and showed up. It resonates also with what Adams shared in his artist talk at the MUDAM on Thursday about his grandmother, the seminal figure in his life who not only cared for him but for many others who called her house home. 

Adams’ tapestries have evolved since he first began weaving, a development that is on display at the museum, showing different stages of his material archive. Across shifts in technique, material, and scale – from rope to beads, mohair, fabric, and chain – and across questions of belief and identity, one line of inquiry remains constant: recording the residues of the relationship between self and world. His works connect across registers – personal, intimate, domestic, and societal – holding traces of movement between bodies and spaces.

When I first encountered Adams’ work in 2019, he was concerned with the movement of the home: ubiquitous linoleum floors in Bonteheuwel – suburb of Cape Town where he grew up – the flooring over time, records lives lived, translated into codes of colour, pattern, and thread. Then came desire lines – those paths that defy rigid town-planning ideas of how space should be used – again recording movement: people crossing, meeting, shaping a lived blueprint of society. To a more direct translation where Adams invites dancers to leave the imprint of their movement, creating traces on canvas directly, which are amongst other tapestries on show at MUDAM.

From swatches – as he calls them – studio experiments to sculptural translations, he developed a language that translates contexts between spaces and bodies into tactile typographies. We experience them in the hallway of the museum, a conscious decision that invites visitors to read through touch – an offer unusual in controlled art environments, yet central to Adams’ practice: creating community through collective making that involves family, assistants, and collaborators alike, and the inclusion of people with limited visual fields within the exhibition design.

Adams has always inscribed his personal journey into his works and has been generous in sharing his story of family, self, faith, and his view onto a society scarred by apartheid and segregation, to the capability of defining ones future in new ways. In Between Then and Now, this trajectory becomes newly legible: the exhibition traces the evolution of his weaving while extending his long-standing concern with traces and movement toward a direct imprint between body and material – a shift that unfolds further in conversation with the artist below.

The exhibition is on at MUDAM Luxembourg until 23.08.2026. I highly recommend going – feel your way through, physically and emotionally.

Nisha MeritYour current exhibition traces the evolution of your weaving while also introducing this more direct imprint between body and material. What is the exhibition about for you – what are you presenting here, and how does it feel?

Igshaan AdamsI feel really good about the show. I think it’s a little bit like scratching an itch – something I’ve been wanting to do and finally got to do. The show is called Between Then and Now, and it refers to the corridor connecting the two big galleries we occupy. In that corridor we laid out a timeline of how the weaving has evolved. I was able to include the very first little swatch I made in 2014 – a straightforward back-and-forth rope weaving. From there you can see how, over time, we experimented with materials: beads, fabric pieces, different ropes, chain, mohair. The technique evolved too. At some point I wanted the work to become more sculptural, so we inserted metal armatures into the loom and wove over them. Once off the loom I could bend and sculpt them so they sit off the wall or exist fully in space. I think about my collaboration with Kyle Morland, who created metal structures that I then skinned through weaving. So there’s a clear evolution, which the title refers to.

What’s also new for me are the dance prints. Earlier in my life I was very focused on my internal world – my upbringing, family, the factors that shaped me – trying to give myself what I wasn’t given so I could live peacefully. Through performances with family members, including my father, I worked through those relationships. But there’s always residue – parts that remain difficult to access. Through my Sufi teacher I understood that movement is the language of the body. So I invited dancers to move without choreography on canvases laid over painted linoleum. Their movements transferred paint onto the canvas, producing monotype prints – traces of the body. Those canvases then became templates for tapestries. In one I wove only the negative space, omitting the body’s marks — reflecting my interest in withholding and missing information. In another we followed the dance print fully. It continues my earlier use of linoleum floors and communal pathways – focusing on traces and gaps.

NMYour work started from a very personal domestic story and now seems more abstract and collaborative, inviting other bodies to leave their traces too.

IAThat expansion was intentional. I think in concentric rings: first family and home, then the wider community, then communal desire lines – how people actually move through space despite what planners decide. I relate to that idea of finding your own path. And now again through individuals dancing. Even when I use my own story, it’s always more universal. If I’m honest about my own situation, others can recognise themselves in it.

NMI love how you translate the psychology of spaces – the designed path versus the organic shortcut that creates different encounters with the surrounding.

IAYes, it becomes personal in that way. That’s what I loved about linoleum floors – they’re almost personal documents capturing experience. Not factual research; I never interviewed the families. I wanted space for my own imagination without taking their stories.

NMThat’s the integrity of collaboration – everyone contributes, but it is also allowed to become something else.

IAExactly. It’s a triangle between myself, collaborators or institutions, and the audience. They complete that cycle. So that openness is important.

NMLooking back into your own material archive and making processes – was there a discovery?

IAAbsolutely. I decided early on that I wasn’t going to study traditional weaving or standard materials. I wanted experimentation – incomplete, broken, not new – so the objects feel like they’ve had a history of their own. In the studio we let things happen: assistants move works, they get entangled, they form their own direction. Once I see something, I might push it further. I also give assistants materials and instructions but leave space for their intuition. Their individual histories enter the work — like someone else handwriting your autobiography. They’re massively important contributors. I wanted to see what we could create together rather than adopting existing techniques.

NMYour work reached a grand scale and MUDAM offers these huge walls. How do you think about scale?

IAThe work should dictate scale. As artists we’re conduits – the object takes on its own life. Sometimes I want tension between small and large, subtle and bold. MUDAM’s scale allows the work to breathe. The show is dense, so we also created quieter spaces, like the gold-dust clouds in the atrium, where people can pause. In the corridor people can touch everything – which is unusual for a museum.

NMIt collapses the distance between viewer and artwork.

IAYes. Museums can be alienating, even though they preserve objects. With my work people want to touch – it’s sensual. In previous shows I included small tactile swatches for visually impaired visitors. Here we expanded that so touching became integral. It feels inclusive.

NMIt almost feels like an extended offering of your work and your practice – from personal to collaborative to communal – shifting perspectives without accusation.

IABeautiful. Exactly. It’s about offering something different, not pointing fingers. Just finding better ways to engage.