Casey Kaplan
For His First U.S. Museum Show, Igshaan Adams Creates Tapestries That Reflect on South African History
By Tessa Solomon | April 5th 2022
Imagine stepping off a paved road onto a swath of greenery, seeking a shortcut. Over the course of many years, many others do the same. In trampling the underbrush, a new path is created—together, unconsciously, you have carved what’s known as a “desire line.”
That phenomenon lends its name to the title for a new exhibition of Cape Town–based artist Igshaan Adams at the Art Institute of Chicago. His largest exhibition to date, “Desire Lines” is also Adams’s first major show in the U.S. and features more than 20 majestic, intricate tapestries and textile installations, dating from 2014 to ones fresh from the studio. To each he has added found objects drawn from his native South Africa—shells, rope, wire, glass, and beads—and he sculpts them with help from his friends and family.
In his art, the literal act of weaving represents how the history of Adams’s hometown, Bonteheuwel, a segregated working-class township of Cape Town, is woven into his spirituality, sexuality, and family. Al-Muhyee (The Giver of Life), from 2020, for example, is a rose in bloom, in a nod to his Sufi faith. He titled another I was a hidden treasure, then I wanted to be known (2020), and its thick weaving of metal, rope, and tassel resembles a canopy or camouflage. Its name references a belief that God created humankind because he needed to be recognized; we submit to being known too, and hope the rewards outweigh the ordeal.
In a monumental new commission created for the show, diverging paths of glass, gold, and wood offer visitors several ways forward. His art has always posited that life is the sum of the paths we tread between the individual and the community, between the self and the soul. Now, a decade into his career, Adams asks of viewers, “If your life left an imprint, like the body makes along desire lines, what shape would you hope to leave?”
To learn more about the show, which is on view through August 1, ARTnews interviewed Adams over zoom.
Image: Igshaan Adams. l-Muhyee (“The Giver of Life”), 2020.
SCHERYN ART COLLECTION, CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA. IMAGE COURTESY OF BLANK PROJECTS, CAPE TOWN. © IGSHAAN ADAMS.
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