Peaceful Terrain: A Conversation with Igshaan Adams

Igshaan Adams weaves everyday materials—beads, chains, twine, fabric, plastic, wood, and wire—into mesmeric sculptural installations. His interest in weaving grew from childhood encounters with the baskets that his family collected in Bonteheuwel, a Cape Town suburb, and reflects his memories of apartheid-era South Africa. With no formal training in the craft, his approach remains intuitive, involving large communities of people in the making process.

“Between Then and Now,” the largest presentation of his work to date, at Mudam Luxembourg–Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, features new and recent works centered on Gebedswolke iii (2025), a site-specific array of floating gold clouds. The ephemerality of Gebedswolke is counterbalanced by several monumental tapestries, including Holy Terrain (2024), based on Adams’s dance prints. Made by performers moving across canvas, their hands and feet transferring paint, these dance prints—presented at Mudam as an immersive environment—unfurl an exuberant collective energy that combines with the clouds and tapestries to create a liberating, life-affirming choreography.

Ina Cole: “Between Then and Now” refers to a timeline of your practice, but it also suggests a state of transition or limbo. What kind of emotional, social, or political states are you exploring in this exhibition?
Igshaan Adams: I’ve always found myself in between states, unclaimed by any particular group. I grew up during the apartheid years, as a second-class citizen, and the feeling has never left me. I had a sense of being not quite Black enough, and not white, but somewhere in between. It’s similar to the experience of returning to the place where you were born and raised. The place and language are familiar, but you’re no longer fully part of it. It happens to many people, and I think it can be positive. “Between Then and Now” mainly relates to how the weaving has evolved over time, how materials and techniques became more complex, and how I found my way, step by step.

IC: Do the works at Mudam relate to each other or occupy distinct territories or themes?
IA: The show originated at The Hepworth Wakefield in the U.K., where it was called “Weerhoud” (“Withheld” in Afrikaans). The Mudam presentation is an expansion on the original show, which is why it acquired a new title, and parts of it are quite distinct. The idea of a void or gap is important. I often feel that certain information isn’t to hand, or that it’s unavailable to me, so the works also hold certain voids. One tapestry—Jaime-Lee, Byron, Dustin, Faroll, Lynette (2024)—is pushed away from the wall with special hooks. This work contains holes, so you can see through it, which creates a void between the tapestry and the wall. At Mudam, the show is in two identical spaces, with a corridor linking them. There’s also an atrium space in the entrance hall, where I installed Gebedswolke iii, the gold prayer clouds.

IC: Gebedswolke iii is the exhibition’s centerpiece. The cloud is an appropriate metaphor for prayer. Why do you keep returning to it in your practice?
IA: When I was a kid, my grandparents took me to the place where they grew up—a place where people danced, kicking the ground to produce dust clouds. It was my first impression of these ephemeral clouds of dust, and their formation made me ask, “What happens to all of our emotional prayers?” Earlier in life, when looking for a way out of my situation, I concluded those prayers were up in the clouds. This provided a new internal experience for me, an accumulation, building like a cloud, which represented the sincere dreams and prayers of a child. A Sufi master taught me this idea at a time when I had many mystical questions. I wanted to express something I found difficult, so I used the concept of the cloud. I believe that if I’m honest about my own experiences, those experiences become universal. We’re all just humans after all.

IC: The exhibition also includes your dance prints, installed as a large-scale environment for the first time. Are the dance prints templates for the tapestries?
IA: The dance prints are canvases produced during performances. At Mudam, they’re printed on both sides, front and back, and suspended in a layered way, so that you can walk around and experience them. The dance prints have always been templates for the tapestries, but here they’re exhibited as artworks, not just as the residue of a performance or process material. Large-scale tapestries based on the dance prints are also currently installed at the Guggenheim Bilbao, and my uncle’s dance company, Garage Dance Ensemble, performed at the opening, which was very exciting.

IC: Why is the notion of the collective so important to you?
IA: Weaving lends itself to a community. Right from the beginning, it was clear that it would require a community to achieve what I wanted to make. My practice evolved from understanding how important people are to the studio. I have 25 assistants, many of them family members, community members, or students I’ve taught. I have a personal relationship with the people in my studio, which extends out to their community members, family, and friends. We send them beads to put onto strings, and these strings are woven into the tapestries. Close to 100 people are involved in the making of one work. I’ve always appreciated their contributions. The work is so handmade, and the dance performances are an extension of that community. I fill my world by the domestic space and the people within it.

IC: Holy Terrain has a distinct geological feel to it. How did this tapestry develop?
IA: Holy Terrain is an excavation into the body, based on a dance print. The body holds onto our experiences and traumas. My body knows things I don’t consciously have access to. Movement and dance give the body an opportunity to say what it needs to or let things go. My curiosities lie with the inside world, and what’s inside will manifest in some way. The intention with dance and performance is to speak about terrain—not physical terrain, but as a way of accessing our internal world. My practice has always been about trying to fix something, or figure it out, so that I can have a peaceful terrain. Holy Terrain speaks of my inside world, of finding light, holiness, and beauty.

IC: Your process is highly intuitive, yet forward planning must be crucial when creating works for exhibitions.
IA: Absolutely, a big part of the practice is intuitive, but it does require a lot of planning ahead. Over time, processes have sped up and become easier. A language has developed in the studio, and my team know exactly what I want in terms of changing a technique. We’ve been through many different stages of the practice together. My principal weavers, who started out together, are still with me. In the past, I used plastic sheets with scribbles, textures, or codes in felt pen to communicate technique and the mixture of materials. Now, it’s become much easier for me to communicate a desire without the added translation of marks. Their personalities also play a role, and I use different assistants depending on whether I want to create a bold statement or a subtle one.

IC: There must be deep trust between you and your studio assistants.
IA: One hundred percent. It’s why I emphasize the relationships that have built up over the years. I couldn’t achieve what I do without them. They’re vital.

IC: Sometimes, during the course of installing artworks, a shift can develop. Aspects that weren’t apparent in the studio suddenly materialize in the gallery. Looking at “Between Then and Now” as a whole, have you noticed any shift in your practice, and what direction might you take next?
IA: I feel I’m at the end of a cycle and at the beginning of another one. The works are more sculptural now. I’m using big geometric and organic structures as obstacles in the weaving, so that the fabric takes on the shape of the structure. For instance, I built a pyramid and allowed the threads of the loom to go around it. I’m then left with a woven form that holds the pyramid shape. Many pieces are off the wall—not flat, but in space—and the intention is for people to enter into these woven structures. My work is quite tactile. In Mudam’s corridor space, visitors can touch and interact with swatches from earlier pieces. The swatches are in between states—the start of something, not yet resolved. I’ve had little swatch displays in many of my shows. At Mudam, the idea has become much more important, with an entire corridor of swatches—a simple concept, but inclusive. It’s super nice to make the gallery less alienating, and why not?

“Between Then and Now,” organized by Mudam Luxembourg and The Hepworth Wakefield in collaboration with ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, continues through August 23, 2026, at Mudam Luxembourg. “Unsettling Dust: The Body’s Archive” is on view at the Guggenheim Bilbao through November 1, 2026.