Artist: Igshaan Adams (South African, born 1982)
Title: Klip Gooi (stone throw) iii
Date: 2021
Materials: Wood, glass, gemstone, and semi-precious stone beads, metal charms, metal garden fence, chain, variety of metal wires (copper and brass), polyester and nylon rope.
Dimensions: 110.79 x 28.74 x 36.61 inches
Credit: Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, gift of James and Anne DeNaut courtesy Vail Caldwell Projects, 2025.15.

From September 8–October 5, 2025, Igshaan Adams’s sculpture Klip Gooi (stone throw) iii will be displayed in The Living Room at The Block Museum of Art. Visitors are invited to spend time with Adams’s hanging work, which draws the eye with its gentle movement and broad range of materials.

Igshaan Adams’s abstract sculptures and wall hangings are ephemeral and mysterious, making beauty from everyday materials. Through them, he explores his personal background and gestures towards universal aspects of human experience. Beauty, conflict, desire, violence, and joy all weave through these captivating and immersive works. Over nine feet in length, Klip Gooi (stone throw) iii  is made from a tangle of wire, chain, metal garden fence, and nylon rope embellished with metal charms and beads of glass, gems and semi-precious stones, and wood. The work shimmers in shades of emerald, copper, gold, and pale pink. Hanging in space at a height that places the lowest loops and strands just above the floor, it rotates and sways: an object in constant movement.

The sculpture is among the works Adams calls “dust clouds,” a reference to the reildans, one of the oldest dances in South Africa. Reildans is known for the dust raised through the kicking and stomping of dancers’ feet. It is particularly relevant to Adams’s autobiography, as he is Nama-Khoe through his maternal grandparents, and the rieldans is part of their cultural heritage. The dust kicked up in the rieldans erupts and spirals in clouds that Adams evokes visually in sculptures like this.^[1] Process and discovery are integral to Adams’s practice. Speaking about the invention of the “dust cloud” form, Adams described sitting down in his studio with a massive knot of wire and cord and making himself face the frustration of detangling them in order to bypass his thoughts and connect with his creativity. The term ‘Oorskot,’ in Afrikaans, meaning the remnants of something, encapsulates the prevailing idea surrounding Adams’s sculptures: the notion that they embody the traces of presence. By working through his frustration with the materials, Adams would eventually arrive at a point where the labor became playful and experimental.^[2] Like dance, Adams’s work is filled with impermanence and ephemerality through the use of fragile materials that are allowed to age and decay over time.

Adams uses abstraction as a metaphor to explore personal, family, and community histories. He was born in Bonteheuwel, a settlement founded during the Apartheid era and designated a coloured township. Bonteheuwel residents were active in the anti-Apartheid movement of the mid-twentieth century. Adams’s father was Malay and a Muslim. His mother was Christian, and he was raised by his Christian grandparents. His mother’s Nama-Khoe lineage have homelands that range across South Africa, Namibia, and Botswana. They were subjugated during the colonial period and have faced serious discrimination, including during Apartheid. Adams is also queer, and this, too, was an important part of his sense of self growing up. These identities weave through Adams’s work. In a 2022 interview with Art Institute of Chicago curator Hendrik Folkerts the artist related, “My earlier work and career dealt a lot with the different aspects of my identity—my religion versus my sexuality being queer as a teenager—and all of these aspects were in conflict.”^[3]

Klip Gooi, the title of this sculpture, means “to throw a stone” in Afrikaans, a lingua franca of the region that is derived from Dutch (“Klip,” noun = stone; “gooi,” verb = to throw). The title conjures the stones that were thrown by anti-Apartheid activists in townships like Bonteheuwel as they faced violence from police and the armed forces, who enforced segregationist policies. The materials used to make the work are humble and conjure the simple residences of his youth. In Bontehuewel, Adams says that he connected with the dignity of keeping a simple home beautiful and the hopefulness of creating beauty despite hardship.^[4] The tension between these multiple layers of reality is typical of Adams’s work. He deploys beauty to seduce viewers into hard conversations, tapping into personal and social trauma.^[5]

Another concept Adams draws from as an artist is ‘desire lines,’ which refers to the informal pathways people create as they move through space on a daily basis, often diverging from regulated routes to create more convenient passages. Aerial views of Bonteheuwel show lines drawn across the landscape in this way—a topology of trajectories created by many people’s footsteps. This theme in his work partly recalls the determination and desire to break free from the boundaries of race, religion, and sexuality. Adams’s practice reflects abstraction not as the opposite of representation but as a way of engaging with it. The materials he uses not only bear the physical marks of their previous use, but also carry layers of meaning and memory, reflecting the cultural shaping of their surroundings. Materials are both his grammar and method.^[6]

Adams’s sculpture joins a growing number of works in The Block’s collection by South African artists, reflecting the museum’s commitment to collecting contemporary art from the African continent. Other examples include 16 June 1976 Youth Day, a richly embroidered textile by Rose Kgoete that commemorates the Soweto Uprising, and Train Preacher, a collage by Jabulani Sam Nhlengethwa depicting daily life in South Africa’s urban spaces. These works, like Adams’s, use everyday materials and layered imagery to reflect on histories of resistance, lived experience, and community in South Africa.

Contributed by Kathleen Bickford Berzock, Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs, and Llewyn Blossfeld, Curatorial Associate

[1] Tarini Malik, “Igshaan Adams: Kicking Dust, a curator’s introduction.” South Bank Centre, July 2, 2021, 2 min., 10 sec., https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/magazine/igshaan-adams-kicking-dust-acurators-introduction/

[2] Ben Luke, host. A Brush With. “A brush with…Igshaan Adams.” The Art Newspaper, June 19, 2024.
Podcast, 56 min., 1 sec. https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2024/06/19/podcast-a-brush-withigshaan-adams

[3] Hendrik Folkerts, Igshaan Adams: Desire Lines (Chicago, IL: The Art Institute of Chicago, 2022)

[4] Igshaan Adams, Igshaan Adams: Weerhoud (Wakefield, England, The Hepworth Wakefield, 2024)

[5] Ben Luke, host. A Brush With. “A brush with…Igshaan Adams.” The Art Newspaper, June 19, 2024

[6] Ben Luke, host. A Brush With. “A brush with…Igshaan Adams.” The Art Newspaper, June 19, 2024