Hanging on walls, strewn across the gallery floor, and suspended in mid-air, Adams\u2019s works radiate an ethereal quality\u200a\u2014\u200aa kind of otherworldly stillness that belongs to the oneiric realm. His impeccably coherent palette of muted olive greens and copper tones tinged with red, beige, and black aesthetically unifies each work into an immersive and brilliant whole. Each work is drawn into dialogue with the other. Beads, shells, glass, rope, wire, and found objects are skillfully arranged and intertwined. From afar they remain invisible\u200a\u2014\u200aa multitude of coloured specks shimmering under the gallery spotlights. It is only upon closer inspection that the immense intricacy of each work is manifested. The skill in the craft is breathtaking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this sense, Adams\u2019s installations are not only textile but textual. The lines alluded to in the exhibition title stand at once for the informal paths that pedestrians carve upon the ground as they follow an improvised, desired route; the trajectories of dialogue that communities pursue in order to find each other; and a Sufist spiritual path\u200a\u2014\u200aone that is originally traced by an individual and becomes a reference point for a multitude. But Adams\u2019s lines are also the lines of spoken and written words\u200a\u2014\u200astories and poems that make up the very fabric of life\u200a\u2014\u200athe lines across which complex identity construction unravels. Adams was raised in Bonteheuwel, a formerly segregated township in Cape Town, and grew up in a difficult reality that required him to negotiate different and, at first glance, incompatible racial, religious, and sexual identities as a queer, practising Muslim born to Christian and Muslim parents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"Igshaan-Adams_IwasahiddentreasurethenIwantedtobeknown\u2026\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/106_CRL_Aloi_Igshaan-Adams_IwasahiddentreasurethenIwantedtobeknown\u2026_2016_CORR20220822-scaled.jpg\")
I was a hidden treasure, then I wanted to be known\u2026<\/em>, 2016.
Photo: \u00a9 Igshaan Adams, courtesy of blank projects, Cape Town<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
![\"Igshaan-Adams_AgterOm\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/106_CRL_Aloi_Igshaan-Adams_AgterOm_202020220822-scaled.jpg\")
Agter Om<\/em>, 2020.
Photo: \u00a9 Igshaan Adams, courtesy of blank projects, Cape Town<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Firmly anchored in questions of visibility and invisibility and the nature of the representable and the seemingly unrepresentable, Adams\u2019s carpets and wall tapestries trace and retrace, line by line, personal narratives of spiritual growth inexorably linked to the rhythm of seasons, the passing of time, and the flowing of water. These guiding principles become overt in works such as I was a hidden treasure, then I wanted to be known\u2026 <\/em>(2016), which stem directly from a desire to grasp the nature of creativity and to better understand its inexhaustible, productive agency. Through this intricately woven piece complete with green-golden tassels, Adams is able to pattern an archetypal analogy in which his own creativity takes the form of geological sedimentations that shape a landscape carved over time by water. Like creativity, he explains, mosses flourish and expand over rocks. Creativity is in the ground, in the water, in everything that surrounds us\u200a\u2014\u200ait is the life-giving essence of this planet and the spiritual power that makes us who we are. Like the layers and strata in his imaginary landscapes, we are all bound to natural creative forces. Peeling them away would mean living an inauthentic life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These cosmological continuities are foregrounded in the frequent collapse of the macro and micro. Adams\u2019s cartographic approach\u200a\u2014\u200aa mapping of the soul modelled upon natural elements\u200a\u2014\u200aencompasses at once the intimacy of the domestic and the rational modularity of the built environment. This poetic twist surprisingly unwinds through his use of reclaimed, old, worn linoleum flooring removed from the homes of friends. Abstracting the mundane simplicity of geometric decorative patterns, Adams reveals landscapes of memory\u200a\u2014\u200amaterializations of undecodable pasts that cannot be erased but linger as unavoidable foundations\u200a\u2014\u200ain equal parts vestige and promise of a future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other works, such as Al-Muhyee (The Giver of Life)<\/em> (2020), <\/em>Adams\u2019s \u201clines\u201d are spoken by others and then constructed into breathtakingly iconic images. A single red rose that looms large at the end of the gallery is materialized by thousands of tiny red, pink, and white beads. The intricacy and number instil a sense of sublimity anchored in the incomprehensible might of the multitude\u200a\u2014\u200aagain, we are dazzled. The material and the spiritual are intimately and indissolubly interwoven. But in Adams\u2019s work, classical symbolism is often reinvented on personal grounds. In his installation, the red rose is not a symbol of love but instead exemplifies a principle that underpins the teachings of Ma, Adams\u2019s Sufist spiritual teacher. Her philosophical thinking is a lifeline that links communities across generations. Removing the petals, according to Ma, leads to enlightenment\u200a\u2014\u200athe seed that is the essence of life itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Surrounded by cloud-like sculptures made of twisted metal wire\u200a\u2014\u200aan interpretive rendition of Indigenous South African rituals during which dancers kick the dust off the ground\u200a\u2014\u200aAl-Muhyee (The Giver of Life) <\/em>appears suspended in space as a mystical sun\u200a\u2014\u200athe centre of an imperturbable cosmology, seemingly governing the uninterruptible lines that connect earth and sky, past to present, and humans to nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Igshaan-Adams_l-Muhyee(\u201cThe](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/106_CRL_Aloi_Igshaan-Adams_l-MuhyeeThe-Giver-of-Life_202020220822-scaled.jpg\")
Al-Muhyee (The Giver of Life)<\/em>, 2020.
Photo: \u00a9 Igshaan Adams, courtesy of blank projects, Cape Town<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n