“I am driven by the need to unearth, unmask and unveil the mysteries hidden within the depths of the self, beyond race, class, religion, sexual orientation, and gender. Who am I, beyond my identity?”

The formal influence of Islamic iconography is writ large in Adams’s practice. His Parda series concerns itself with the artist's marginal status as 'colored' as classified under Apartheid legislation; as part Christian and part Muslim; as a homosexual and free-thinker in a predominantly conformist culture. He is also by vocation an artist, which is an anomaly in his community where the Hadith (the ban on all forms of representation) remains in force.

Plate 7 is an Islamic burial green cloth decorated with yellow Koranic verses and images of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and the Kaaba in Mecca, shrouded by a body of Rorschach’s inkblots. The work originated from Bismillah, a performance consisting of the Islamic cleansing ritual performed on a corpse before burial, usually by the closest same-sex relative. During the performance, his father cleansed and wrapped Igshaan's body in three sheets of white linen and positioned it on the green burial cloth. Ever since Igshaan heard this precept from the final sermon of the prophet Mohammed, “Make sure you die long before your death”, he started questioning its real meaning, investigating and interpreting death as a medium of liberation. As the artist claims: “Only through darkness, we understand light”. In this context, Igshaan's symbolic death represents his search for a higher state of being. We cannot know what meanings Adams read into the Rorschach blots, and thus his own ambivalent responses to his culture, are not made privy to the viewer.

“Bismillah is a performance centred around the islamic cleansing ritual performed on a corpse before burial, usually by the closest same sex relative. During the performance my father washed and wrapped my body in three sheets of white linen, exposing the green burial cloth after the final wrapping” Igshaan Adams'Bismillah' was part of the 'Blind Spot' collection of performances curated by Ruth Simbao for the National Arts Festival in South Africa in 2014. The performance took place in the basement of the 1820 Settlers National Monument in Grahamstown. In this performance, the artist's body is prepared for burial following the Islamic cleansing and wrapping ritual.
For more information on this performance see "Cleansing via the senses as eyesight follows the sole: Igshaan Adams' 'Bismillah' performance" by Ruth Simbao in "Igshaan Adams" published by Blank Projects 2015, pages 117 to 131.
Link to performance video:
https://vimeo.com/202625975