Igshaan Adams

During a talk on his 2022 exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, South African artist Igshaan Adams was told by an attendee that many children felt the urge to touch his work: “it's so interactive and your body feels like dancing” (Adams and Folkerts 2022b: n.p.). Younger viewers, less concerned with posturing at a museum, often respond to artwork with their bodies, a reaction Adams's oeuvre seems to particularly evoke. I cannot blame them. My first face-to-face encounter with his work sparked a rare sense of awe toward its luxurious sensorial quality. Edmund Husserl writes that “[a] subject whose only sense was the sense of vision could not at all have an appearing body” (Husserl 1989: 158). Touch is a necessary sense for our experience of the body and its image, which is why children's tactile impulse around Adams's work is an obvious response to an oeuvre in which embodiment is everywhere to be found. “Touch localizes us in the world in a way that seeing does not,” explains Dermot Moran (2010: 138). No wonder, then, that the prospect of touching the work makes the children want to dance. Adams's installations and tapestries— works made of mundane materials like plastic beads, wires, and nylon—exude a liveliness that seems palpable. Handwoven using a detailed and time-consuming practice, the artist's work spurs a tension between the bodies of its producers, the artist and his studio assistants, and the bodies of the viewers. The tension emerges from the potential of these interactions to produce new meanings mediated by the work but not predetermined by it.1 For the young children, tension arises from the conflicting impulses to maintain the expected position of distant viewing and the temptation to break that norm. Adams, who was the 2018 recipient of the prestigious Standard Bank Young Artist award, was born in 1982 and raised in Bonteheuwel, a township at the periphery of Cape Town in an area known as the Cape Flats.2 The child of a Christian Nama-Khoisan woman and a Muslim man, he grew up identified as “Cape Malay” under apartheid's racial classification system.3 Perhaps due to his multicultural upbringing under segregation, he has shown a keen sensibility to the violence of confinement and categorization, investing instead in experimentation, expansion, and diffusion as the modus operandi of his practice. When asked about children's interest in touching his works, he responded, “if it was my studio, I would say ‘touch as much as you want'“ (Adams and Folkerts 2022b: n.p.).Bonteheuwel/Epping (2021; Figs. 1–2), which was on display at the 2022 Venice Biennale, captures an aerial view of Bonteheuwel's train station and its informal foot trails to Epping, an industrial neighborhood where many go to seek work. Known in urbanism as “desire lines,” these spontaneous means of connecting areas designed to be apart create an anarchist relationship to space. They are informal paths that developed without infrastructure, shaped by the local population's continual walking of routes that escape official efforts to condition movement. Unofficial and informal means of movement are particularly poignant in the aftermath of apartheid, which sought to subject all aspects of life to its racialized renderings of space. The desire lines in Adams's work testify to the resistance to official geography and its long-lasting enforcement of class exploitation through racial segregation, in this case by making decent employment harder to access for the predominantly Coloured inhabitants of Bonteheuwel.4 His desire lines speak to more than just a strictly urbanist definition; they also convey what Nick Shepard and Noëleen Murray callAnother work from the same period, Langa (2021; Figs. 3–4), focuses on desire lines between the eponymous township, whose population is predominantly Black, and Bonteheuwel, weaving another map that escapes the segregating logics of South Africa's apartheid regime. But Adams's work moves further than memorializing survival tactics under apartheid to look at how one's desire circumvents erasure from metanarratives, such as those of the state or capital. Traces of the body draw this subversive cartography, which revolves around ethereal evidence for the pursuit of new networks of self-determination, sustained even under the most oppressive circumstances. Sara Ahmed characterizes desire lines as a moment when “deviation leaves its own marks on the ground, which can even help generate alternative lines, which cross the ground in unexpected ways” (Ahmed 2006: 20). Adams has no wish to capture an exhaustive representation of either bodies or spaces, choosing instead to focus on the signs of the unique, the alternative path, within what is typically deemed to be general. As he explains, “there must have been the first people who decided to take this path that others followed” (Bowley 2021). The making of desire lines points to a broader conflict between social affirmation and originality.The children who wish to dance next to Adams's work may be picking up on the bodily movements that are central both as theme and means of producing his works. His sculptural use of wire exemplifies these side effects of bodily movement. Part of Bonteheuwel/Epping, two wire constructions are displayed hanging from the ceiling and directly in front of a monumental tapestry, but this use of wire can also function in standalone works (Fig. 5). Adam's use of three-dimensional compositions made of wire allude to a Nama-Khoisan dance tradition known as rieldans, among the oldest in Southern Africa. (The contemporary Afrikaans term rieldans is borrowed from the Scots language, a “reel” being a Scottish folk dance.) The genre is inspired by animal movements, typically performed in circles, and known for its energetic footwork. Adams's maternal grandparents, who are Nama, used to take him to the Northern Cape to watch these performances. Traditionally performed around a fire, the vigorous movement of the dancers’ feet on sand creates dust clouds. These powerful visual effects of the dance left a strong mark on Adams's childhood and inspired the shapes of his later wire assemblages. Like the desire lines, the dust clouds are memorialized in Adams's art work by the use of resilient materials that highlight the enduring effects of the body's rendering of space. Even though the actions are brief, they harness the power of repetition—in this case, of a dance tradition—in the making of an embodied reality. Rieldans participants interviewed by Michael M. Van Wyk explained,The genre thus constructs not only a different experience of space through the movements of the dancers but also by prompting the shared experience of travel needed for much of its audience to attend the performances. While apartheid attempted to restrict the meaning of bodies by racializing space, Adams's dust clouds and desire lines reverse this formulation by showing the body as a potential agent in the production of networks of resistance to hegemonic structures. This resistance takes place in the tension between following the beaten path and getting off track. In Bonteheuwel/Epping, Adams maps the unofficial alliances connecting Bonteheuwel to Epping, the Cape Flats to the Northern Cape, art centers to the urban periphery, and in the process, he also maps the indigenous lives that sometimes resist hegemonic imperatives through innovation and at other times resist through a commitment to tradition.Bonteheuwel/Epping and Langa are part of a series of fiber compositions in which Adams produces maps of the desire lines connecting the area where he grew up. He looks at these spaces to consider how they are produced by the body, an interest that appears in Adams's investigation of linoleum flooring, a typical material used by his family and others living in the Cape Flats. The affordable flooring, which tends to be replaced as it wears out, is used as a pattern for woven works such as Rentmeesterin (Stewardess, 2021; Figs. 6–7) and Gesteelde Vuur vanaf die Altar (Stolen Fire from the Altar, 2021; Figs. 8–9). Adams freezes the floor cover by registering its discolorations, stains, and leftover debris in his tapestries. Linoleum flooring evokes a domesticity whose privacy often evades legibility in the public discourse. Eusebius McKaiser responded to these works by recalling his own childhood memories of the material: “I can see the linoleum. I can smell it. I can see men at work replacing the old linoleum with the new” (McKaiser 2022: 27). The private and sometimes indecipherable marks of these working-class houses are important for Adams as he thinks of the effects of domestic violence in his upbringing, when marks of abuse were left as various stains on the floor. His works thus point to the role of what is left unsaid in the haunting of traumatic memories that are kept private, those that escape public accountability. After interviewing teenagers from Bonteheuwel who were too young to have experienced apartheid firsthand, Kim Wale reports, “One youth explained that she did not want to bother her parents by asking them about the past because it was ‘too hurtful for them to speak about'“ (Wale 2020: 213). The used linoleum flooring functions as the lived experience of a silenced, undecipherable experience of pain that spans the gamut from domestic violence to life under apartheid. With his art-making process, Adams gestures toward the experience of family life, where trauma, much like stained, worn out, damaged linoleum, is hidden away, repressed, under a series of new layers.Adams's woven work catches the floor's intimate “errors,” placing them in a historical discourse that shifts one's perspective from horizontality of the private floor to the verticality of the public exhibition wall, from transitoriness (the threat of being discarded during renovation) to durableness in the form of a documentable work of art. The work alludes to the experiences that are forgotten in standard historical narratives, left unprocessed beyond their evidence in the tools of one's intimate life. Interest in this material is aptly described by Ahmed's explanation of the role of as showing own of his interest in linoleum with is that you what those in the marks and are all evidence of our They are the of our The floor in Adams's are thus not to be or to of a They are instead a to the of experiences that are typically from even when the private tends to so in its and more The of debris that pattern Adams's in of that the but are not to an that is just beyond our the artist's work often on of his it does not to that the of Adams's the of South a of and that he their His multicultural upbringing under apartheid may have a toward the role of as a for of the of this the of racial and classification the a how and what racial beyond Adams is to through the between and both the of making and a and the in which a in its own His focus on desire lines is an of this tension in practice. on than bodily his work with without their meaning to an his work looks for of a within the or the of how 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experience and from or of the in his practice, the tradition as a to his networks of and as an to beyond of Adams's work from as a central of being a that for what is known as or a of and experience of in the pursuit of the to this of the is at the of described as the condition in which takes for his and the of him He has no about on other than in Adams's interest in a wish to beyond one's own within the of is also to within the of which to the social constructs that one's The and sensorial of to the as the focus of the way for a new experience with the and its in the Adams's works with a sensorial and of the of that all of the to be embodied to is in Adams's of the sensorial experience of his work as a The by the tradition more or renderings of by at the body as a central means of the what he as the representation of in is as has to to as a The by with a contemporary hegemonic discourse that to a to an and Adams this by his work toward in its of the body's its is in works such as and Figs. which use the from and on as a for the of his woven works. in as part of the exhibition I No and these works allude to also an of in which only a representation of an is left for The of bodily and movement in the use of the the are not a visual of their commitment to a just as it leaves a mark on the is to the relationship to the representation of the body in Adams moves from a representation of by or to focus instead on the in which bodies are to the of the in the The point to the of practice, thus in Adams's the way in which shapes and the world around them in a These works are a powerful of the of a shaped by its and to is not the of or but of the sensorial of to art has sought to create an in which the and of material is and in which the of is Adams this tradition by showing the signs of in his practice, such as the to be through and on new and to its The of is with the in which they new to the world to form that escape an to the being of toward or is in Adams's oeuvre but is instead shown in various that In its of the power in the of even when they may to as as with the of Adams's work to in which as which in and does not that and the world can be on the of their state of and a tradition of in Adams's of Adams explains, speak about the that us from the and on this path of a of seeing that has been but you to it (Adams for new which for Adams new of and walking off the beaten Ahmed to the of making as a that not the but the to dance with (Ahmed 2006: is often described as a way or path a as explains, by the of to distant either to seek or as a form of a life, Ahmed which the of the world Ahmed on her own made about and how much at or which way are is about the making of (Ahmed 2006: 20). Adams experiences to his own as a Muslim of from South Africa. The between and by Adams's like a to whose of a and on the tension of liveliness and While Adams's work does not directly the of the lived by in the and the does a place to of the of with the of from both and is by the artist to both its in the tradition and its in the of the and rendering of the In of this Adams is of which of from as a norm. He the of in all its the production of social such as Adams's between and is a path of his from the materials to Adams's and installations the of experiences lived with mundane such as and linoleum a when of social is by the power of their a of the potential of work that is from the working-class Interest in an that to a broader audience appears in Adams's to his childhood and his to his In the artist with and in Cape Town under the to help of children that could be used to generate While with these Adams, who in his as a to two of the and her in Adams's (The studio about at many of them he does not create a practice, the of between and is Adams is much that his studio on and the this has on his work. through in the of the he explains (Adams and Folkerts 2022b: n.p.). Adams's interest in of production is by the of weaving in his a that is and to its with a that by and in studio may even though it does not break with or of studio to on the of Adams's body of work and his bodies are in that from the to a of the that can only be a that to be works are of South African their materials a of the The works are made with beads, and to the inhabitants of the Cape Flats. As the and mundane he and in an of in the and 2022: of the artist's childhood these materials are made by their even luxurious a that the of his which often in the The of used by the class works of art that are both and creates an experience in which and as experiences within of being from our reality. this relationship with Adams's works like to be by the to the relationship between the body and the artist's body of and to for a different sense of in the and to the The wish to touch Adams's works arises from their to consider the world that they produce as that is to the and working-class a world of our own where appears through our exploitation than as a of the The which on their own can be as of a life, create an experience of In a world where the is made to of an of Adams's works is the desire to them with our own as touching them were a to that are not about the of floor at the of Art in to the the of as a reaction to the of the viewers, the young children to their on Adams's works a more to touch the works as a of of their own which made them like in Adams's works not the of the works described by instead to than the his works the role of the in our experience of the In this he moves from the more of the works described by where the work the of a Adams focuses on what are typically as aspects of which he as the means for how between bodies and create new social or to is not by that from the but is through the movements, gestures and of the body” tension is between a work of art and the the and the and the work to new of it and the that it an to of the of on which it is of the place of in which for work does not draw on or it for informal and as a for what has been for it the to consider and how this an Adams's is and in his practice, this is a not of or but of an interest in at one's lived experiences and material as the tools to a that to a lines on a stains on a linoleum the of a body on a and the clouds of dust raised during a rieldans all the role of the body in space. The body is not a to but an agent that experience and can it even in through how bodies just as bodies in this Ahmed Adams's monumental and installations an experience of materials that their to a with the bodies that have them new The of the making a central focus through the that space, and body to as a experience in the viewing the works. The between the body and its an of is what makes Adams's work so The artist has produced a body of work that is the of used as the means for a but is the material of an for is in tension with the in its own production and the that for As part of the that are with the in a and space, are to a in which the body and its are by other and where these or new space for This experience is in the material and the an from an artist by Adams's work through the experience of seeing from materials that are so His works the of new from the beaten encounter is the of the with the the as either or mundane was to be as a central of the its power to awe would the of life with meaning beyond its the audience in new of

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