To mark the opening of Igshaan Adams: Between Then and Now, Mudam hosts an artist talk with Igshaan Adams. Working across textile, sculpture and performance, Adams transforms everyday and overlooked materials into works that speak to ideas of collective belonging, resilience and care.

The exhibition brings together more than sixty pieces from the past decade, including monumental woven tapestries, suspended sculptural forms and a new large-scale installation of his dance prints. These works draw on personal memories shaped by apartheid-era South Africa and explore how movement, community and lived experience leave physical and emotional traces.

This artist talk offers the chance to listen to Adams on the opening day and gain a closer sense of the world behind the exhibition. It is an opportunity to hear directly from the artist and dive into the atmosphere of Between Then and Now.

Biography:

Igshaan Adams’ (1982, Cape Town) practice coalesces performance, weaving, sculpture and installation. Born in Bonteheuwel, a suburb in Cape Town, South Africa, Adams draws upon his background to contest racial, sexual and religious boundaries. This intersectional topography remains visible throughout his practice and serves as a palimpsest upon which traces of personal histories are inscribed and reinscribed. Adams approaches materiality through his own subjectivity, often using cultural and religious references in conjunction with surfaces that have always been present throughout his life. His interest in material oscillates between the intuitive process of handling different substances and a formal inquiry into how various materials behave in different contexts and how they transfigure or evolve. Adams has held solo exhibitions internationally, including at ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, Aarhus, Denmark (2025); The Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield, UK (2024); The Institute of Contemporary Art Boston (2024); Thomas Dane Gallery, London (2023); The Art Institute of Chicago (2022); Kunsthalle Zürich (2022); Hayward Gallery, London (2021); and The Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town (2018). He has participated in numerous group shows and biennials, including the Bukhara Biennial, Uzbekistan (2025); Space of Togetherness, NEON, National Theatre of Greece Drama School, Athens (2024); the Barbican Centre, London (2024); the 35th Bienal de São Paulo (2023); the Islamic Arts Biennale, Jeddah (2023); the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (2022); the 23rd Triennale Milano (2021); Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel (2021); and the Pérez Art Museum Miami (2020), among many others. His work is held in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Speed Art Museum, Louisville, USA; Tate, London; The Hepworth Wakefield; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; ARoS Aarhus Art Museum; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Art Institute of Chicago; Baltimore Museum of Art; The Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Evanston, USA; Inhotim Museum, Brumadinho, Brazil; Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town; Minneapolis Institute of Art; Standard Bank collection, Johannesburg; and the University of Cape Town. In 2018, he was awarded the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Visual Art. Igshaan Adams lives and works in Cape Town.