Igshaan Adams: Between Then and Now

Mudam Luxembourg—Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean presents Igshaan Adams: Between Then and Now, the largest presentation to date of South African artist Igshaan Adams (1982, Cape Town). The exhibition traces the artist’s distinctive visual language, one shaped by care, healing and community. 

“I’d much rather imagine how beautiful the future could be than understand how dark the past was.” —Igshaan Adams  

In his practice, Igshaan Adams transforms everyday materials such as beads, chains, rope and fabric into sculptural and performative compositions. His interest in weaving stems from early encounters with the woven baskets his family collected in Bonteheuwel, the suburb of Cape Town where he grew up. Informed by personal memories of apartheid-era South Africa, his work engages with enduring social realities to explore racial, sexual and religious questions. 

At the heart of the exhibition is the gold cloud installation Gebedswolke iii (2025), specifically conceived by the artist for Mudam. Suspended in the museum’s light-filled foyer, the work transforms charms, wire and metallic disks into an atmospheric constellation of floating forms. Over the past decade, Adams has repeatedly returned to the metaphor of the cloud. Originating as drawn scribbles, his sculptural ‘clouds’ have evolved into an aggregation of studio residues, including dust, bearing the trace of movement and everyday ritual. Inspired by the traditional South African communal ‘Rieldans’, the sweeping form of Weerhoud (2024) similarly captures the dust raised by dancers’ feet, turning their gestures into living drawings.

Adams’ dance prints—presented here for the first time as a large-scale environment—were produced by performers moving freely across the canvas, their hands and feet transferring paint to the surface. Exploring the body’s capacity to hold and release trauma, this colourful installation reflects Adams’ interest in the traces that lived experiences can leave behind. Hanging from the ceiling, the abstract canvases form a silent choreography, where movement becomes a language of liberation. 

The exhibition opens with an expansive installation of textile samples which visitors are invited to touch, welcoming them into Adams’ collective process. As part of this sensorial presentation, audio recordings of conversations with his studio assistants and technicians are on display. Adams explains: ‘I’ve built my career on improvising the weaving. I deliberately avoided getting weaving training so as not to know, and to operate from that not-knowing. I taught myself and figured things out for myself.’ These tactile and sonic elements trace the artist’s journey: they expand our perception beyond the visual, while inviting us to engage with his world in an embodied way. 

The monumental tapestries exhibited in the space, including Holy terrain (2024), are comprised of cotton, twine, plastic and stone. These materials, often considered cheap, speak to Adams’ experience within a system structured by racial divisions of class and value. Spirit and memory are embedded in every fibre of these works, elevating them far above their material worth. Challenging conventional ideas of value, the exhibition unfolds as a landscape of reimagined belonging. 

Igshaan Adams: Between Then and Now is organised by Mudam Luxembourg and The Hepworth Wakefield in collaboration with ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum. It reflects Mudam’s commitment to amplifying global artistic voices and fostering cross-cultural dialogue at the heart of Europe. The exhibition offers a meditation on transformation, moving from the residues of history to the imagination of a shared future.