If That I Knew
Igshaan Adams
15 february - 24 march 2013
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Yesterday while we were waiting for Igshaan to come by and work on his exhibition here at Rongwrong we heard the news that the Pope abdicated. We were listening to His announcement, spoken in latin and subtitled on the CNN channel whilst watching the Amsterdam snow melt. Your religious background can catch up with you when you least expect it, reviving forgotten memories of sleepy Sunday afternoon Bible classes, countryside weddings in flowery churches and an uneasy feeling of melancholia, doubt and conflict.
Igshaan spends a couple of days here in Amsterdam, working with prayer mats, stitching, embroidering, knitting, lacing, quilting, sewing, cutting up, sewing back again. While casually unwrapping a stack of fabrics he just bought at the local shop in Bos-en-Lommer, he recalls his own upbringing as a Muslim in a South African Christian family and the confrontation with his sexual identity. These personal stories form an important element in his artistic practice where the queer and the playful cohabit with the traditional and the ancestral.
He talks about the negative symbolism of the dog as an impure animal within Islam, Cape Town windy summers and the skill of orientating towards the Mecca anywhere you are. We recall stray dogs in Rome, Mediterranean seasides, and the teenagers' skill of skipping religion classes while reading St Augustine and Pasolini.
We never saw the site of the silent struggle our egos waged with our fathers. Now we can see what we have unwittingly destroyed and created.*
Igshaan addresses Islamic tradition through an analysis of its language, and at the same time, constructing his own. Multiple patterns form a labyrinth that open up the possibility of confronting the religious and the finding of the self on the margins of tradition.
An adolescents' belief in truth and the spirit pervades a world made of ritual artifacts, dreamy animals and belated homely objects. The domestic is continually embracing and amending the metaphysical struggle of being. The spiritual is constantly interlaced with the corporal; feelings of exclusion and segregation are on the verge of rebellion and transformation.
* Walter Benjamin, The Metaphysics Of Youth (1913-14)
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Our upcoming program for this year at rongwrong is inspired by the beautiful text "Metaphysics of Youth" by Walter Benjamin written a hundred years ago in 1913/1914. More than looking at just different representations of youth in contemporary art, we aim to present youth not as a question of duration but as a vessel of imploded energy.
This project is made possible with the generous support of Amsterdam Fond voor de Kunst.
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FRIDAY the 15th of March 4pm - STEDELJIK MUSEUM - a conversation between Igshaan Adams and Clare Butcher -
15 february - 24 march 2013
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Yesterday while we were waiting for Igshaan to come by and work on his exhibition here at Rongwrong we heard the news that the Pope abdicated. We were listening to His announcement, spoken in latin and subtitled on the CNN channel whilst watching the Amsterdam snow melt. Your religious background can catch up with you when you least expect it, reviving forgotten memories of sleepy Sunday afternoon Bible classes, countryside weddings in flowery churches and an uneasy feeling of melancholia, doubt and conflict.
Igshaan spends a couple of days here in Amsterdam, working with prayer mats, stitching, embroidering, knitting, lacing, quilting, sewing, cutting up, sewing back again. While casually unwrapping a stack of fabrics he just bought at the local shop in Bos-en-Lommer, he recalls his own upbringing as a Muslim in a South African Christian family and the confrontation with his sexual identity. These personal stories form an important element in his artistic practice where the queer and the playful cohabit with the traditional and the ancestral.
He talks about the negative symbolism of the dog as an impure animal within Islam, Cape Town windy summers and the skill of orientating towards the Mecca anywhere you are. We recall stray dogs in Rome, Mediterranean seasides, and the teenagers' skill of skipping religion classes while reading St Augustine and Pasolini.
We never saw the site of the silent struggle our egos waged with our fathers. Now we can see what we have unwittingly destroyed and created.*
Igshaan addresses Islamic tradition through an analysis of its language, and at the same time, constructing his own. Multiple patterns form a labyrinth that open up the possibility of confronting the religious and the finding of the self on the margins of tradition.
An adolescents' belief in truth and the spirit pervades a world made of ritual artifacts, dreamy animals and belated homely objects. The domestic is continually embracing and amending the metaphysical struggle of being. The spiritual is constantly interlaced with the corporal; feelings of exclusion and segregation are on the verge of rebellion and transformation.
* Walter Benjamin, The Metaphysics Of Youth (1913-14)
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Our upcoming program for this year at rongwrong is inspired by the beautiful text "Metaphysics of Youth" by Walter Benjamin written a hundred years ago in 1913/1914. More than looking at just different representations of youth in contemporary art, we aim to present youth not as a question of duration but as a vessel of imploded energy.
This project is made possible with the generous support of Amsterdam Fond voor de Kunst.
+
FRIDAY the 15th of March 4pm - STEDELJIK MUSEUM - a conversation between Igshaan Adams and Clare Butcher -
