Igshaan Adams transforms the Guggenheim Bilbao into a living archive of movement, intimacy, and collective repair.
26 May 2026
At the Guggenheim Bilbao, South African artist Igshaan Adams presents ‘Unsettling Dust: The Body’s Archive’, an immersive exhibition that blurs the boundaries between weaving, choreography, sculpture, and social history. Presented as the latest chapter of the museum’s in situ series, the exhibition sees Adams transform the gallery into a living archive of movement and memory, where every thread, bead, and suspended form carries the residue of lived experience.
Born in Cape Town and raised in Bonteheuwel, a community shaped by apartheid’s spatial violence, Adams has long explored how histories of race, religion, sexuality, and displacement become inscribed onto both the body and the built environment. In Bilbao, these concerns unfold through monumental woven tapestries derived from collaborative dance performances staged between South African and Greek dancers in Athens. The resulting “dance prints” become records of touch, rhythm, and collective release, later translated into intricate textile works that hover between fragility and monumentality.
Rich with emotional and material density, ‘Unsettling Dust’ proposes weaving not simply as craft, but as a communal act of healing. Here, movement becomes memory, and memory becomes a pathway toward transformation.
This exhibition is on view at the Guggenheim Bilbao from 5 May until 1 November 2026.
