Igshaan Adams

'Getuie'

Working in performance, weaving, sculpture, and installation, South African artist Igshaan Adams explores materiality, phenomenology, and identity. In his first solo museum exhibition in the U.S., Adams lines the walls and floors of the expansive Pamela Elaine Poetter Gallery with used linoleum flooring extracted from working-class homes across Cape Town, South Africa. Within the interior of the installation lies an amalgamation of works created from large-scale sculptural weavings as well as heavily embellished two-dimensional wall hangings that map the linoleum flooring’s patterns and the pathways caused by years of foot traffic in its original setting.

Signature image for Igshaan Adams exhibitions
Igshaan Adams, "When Dust Settles," installation view, 2018. Courtesy of the artist and blank projects, Cape Town, South Africa.

The title of the show is in Afrikaans, Adams’ mother tongue, and directly translates as "witness." It alludes to the way in which the flooring is testament to the lives that left their marks and traces, as well as the vernacular meaning of swearing oath to the character of someone in your inner circle. Getuie is an evocative, immersive environment that speaks to Adams’ ongoing exploration of the domestic environment as a contested site where issues of race, religion, class, and sexuality intersect in both comforting and unsettling ways.

This exhibition is presented as part of SCAD deFINE ART 2020, the university’s annual program of exhibitions, lectures, and performances held Feb. 18–20 at locations in Atlanta and Savannah, Georgia.

Install Views

Credits

Getuie is organized by guest curator Storm Janse van Rensburg.

 

Museum Admission

The exhibition is free for museum members and SCAD students, faculty, and staff with a valid SCAD Card. Open to the public with the cost of museum admission.

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