An Interview with Igshaan Adams

by Akin Oladimeji // Mar. 17, 2026

As you enter the foyer of Mudam Luxembourg, your eye is drawn upward. ‘Gebedswolke iii (prayer cloud)’—an installation made up of charms, wire and metallic disks—is suspended from the ceiling. It is an ethereal constellation of floating forms and a continuation of a motif (the cloud) that South African artist Igshaan Adams has worked with over the past ten years, initially as scribbles and later as installations, including some made from dust. Among the other notable works in the exhibition are a series of dance prints, in which dancers transferred paint with their hands and feet onto vast canvases. Colossal textile pieces, characteristic of Adams’ practice and made from cotton, plastic, twine and stone, are also on view in ‘Between Then and Now.’ The artist weaves spirit and remembrance into every strand, giving these works a resonance that far exceeds their physical materials. We spoke to Adams about how he translates memory into matter and why touch is important to the experience of his works.

a portrait of the artist working in the middle of a hanging, pinkish cloud installation with his face obscured by the work

Igshaan Adams, portrait // Photo by Mario Todeschini

Akin Oladimeji: Memory is mentioned in the literature surrounding this show several times. Why is it important to you here?

Igshaan Adams: I think it bothers me that my body and my mind hold onto things, or that there’s information inside me that I don’t have access to. Memory is not solid, it shifts and it changes. I felt like this is the space that I needed to start from. I would actually go into our home, where I grew up, and look at that space, the quality of the space, the size, the broader environment, because I knew that the environment ultimately created an environment inside of me, too. I wanted to look into this external-internal thing, this “inflection” on the outside of what’s going on inside. I delved into it a little bit, looking very carefully at the qualities of that external world, knowing it will give me access to the internal world. That’s where it starts. And, in my earlier practice, I would use meditation and kind of go back, day by day, year by year, trying to push back further to reach those formative years, to really understand what had happened that produced my sense of self.

Igshaan Adams: ‘Between Then and Now,’ 2026, installation view at Mudam Luxembourg // Photo by Marc Domage, copyright Mudam Luxembourg

AO: Is there a key memory that you’re channelling in any of the works?

IA: The one called ‘Ouma’ (2016) references my grandmother. She became my mother, since I didn’t grow up with my parents. This is a very common story, of course, that grandparents fall into the role of parents, unfortunately. I had very stable and very strong grandparents. My grandfather was actually a policeman for the Apartheid government and my grandmother worked as a cook, as well as a cleaner. She was a very robust, very strong woman. I think the memory of a moment of just seeing her weighed down, broken down by life and having been married for 60 years and every day having to cook for people, some of whom were ungrateful. They had never really acknowledged that sacrifice. The weight of that life was visible within her physical body and so this work I made connected to this moment of realization that she had truly sacrificed her life, not just for her own children and grandchildren, but also for the community. She became this kind of community mother taking care of her relatives. For example, there was her niece who she raised from the time she was a baby. And a lot of the family’s children who wanted to study, she would give them a place to stay in Cape Town so that they could get through their tertiary education. So that’s one memory.

Igshaan Adams: ‘Between Then and Now,’ 2026, installation view at Mudam Luxembourg // Photo by Marc Domage, copyright Mudam Luxembourg

AO: I noticed people were allowed to handle the woven works in the corridor. That was very pleasurable and, of course, can evoke memories. Were you worried about damage to the works?

IA: Absolutely not. For many years I would send [the museums] a small little piece—what we would call swatches or a little experiment—the beginning of something new that I would initially try out on a small scale, and ask them to put it at the entrance of the show so that people who are sensory deprived could touch it. I also feel like the work itself, because it is so textured and sensual on the eye, there is a desire to touch it.

I want people to touch them. If they come to my studio, I say, touch as much as you want. But of course, I also respect that the museum has its own role in preserving these objects. There’s a clash there. But Mudam were open to expanding on this idea. Now I do call these pieces my “archive of failures.” It was just that some of these ideas come too soon so one is not ready to fully delve into this new idea. So I put it away and in some instances, in 7 or ten years, I go back and I unpack these pieces and then I get inspired, or I feel I’m a little bit more prepared to expand on them. So, there’s a few examples in that conglomerate of a piece that I’ve made years ago that has now re-inspired a much bigger work, much later.

Igshaan Adams: ‘Between Then and Now,’ 2026, installation view at Mudam Luxembourg // Photo by Marc Domage, copyright Mudam Luxembourg

AO: So they’re sketches in a way, as well.

IA: Absolutely. That’s a nice way of saying it. They are little sketches.

AO: As a final question, I wanted to ask: was the memory of growing up as a “colored” person during Apartheid a driver of some of these works?

IA: Yes, that is definitely a period in my life I’ve been thinking and talking about and looking at a lot. I’ve been considering what that racial category does to you. I kind of feel like South Africans are, I shouldn’t say this, but I feel it’s a bit like being sexually assaulted. I feel like we are racially assaulted, like we become aware of our differences around race too early, when we are not ready to fully grasp what it means, and it just turns ugly. I think that’s very unfortunate, but I won’t necessarily say that the works that look at that dynamic are as present in this show.