Thus far, he has shown two bodies of work. The first, exhibited on the AVA's 'Greatest Hits' show in January 2010, is an installation of a traditional Cape Flats sitting room hung with Adams's untitled self-portraits, in each of which he appears in startlingly different guises. In one he's a girl staring out of dark shadows, looking like Holly in Lou Reed's Walk on the Wild Side, who ‘plucked her eyebrows on the way’ as she hitch-hiked to the playground of identity construction that was Warhol's New York.
In another image, Adams is a devout Muslim youth looking up towards a source of light as if searching for spiritual truth. In yet another, he is a ghoul-like humanoid trace without definition, half-formed, emerging from a tangle of obsessive stitching. Adams writes that this show is about his ‘conflicting personal identity, being coloured, gay, Muslim, and raised in a Christian home with Christian values.'
The difficulty of achieving this is expressed in the show's title, which is at once angry and exulting. The artist writes that 'The title, "Jou Ma Se Poes", is a derogatory slang expression that defines "coloured" culture in many ways. For me it also speaks of an attitude that says "to hell with it": I accept all aspects of my hybrid identity. This is a celebration of who I am.’
Adam's first solo show, 'Vinyl', was exhibited at the AVA in April 2010. For this show, Adams offered neighbours in his community in Bonteheuwel new vinyl floor-covering in exchange for vinyl that had been worn down by years of domestic use. The pieces are large, varying between one and three metres wide. Adams hung about ten of them as separate works. His basic 'canvases' thus already exhibited standard commercial pattern designs, evoking a global simultaneity of mass produced domesticity, which had been fragmented by constant use until they were both abstract and abject, complex and beautiful while at the same time degraded by poverty and filth.
Adams creates an atemporal clash of commodified patterns which speak of the impersonal and distant power of global hegemonies vastly removed from his own home, yet permeating its personal spaces intimately. The geometries of the vinyl evoke vague, corrupted references to Islamic design, and the floral upholstery fabric testifies to European colonial influence. The clash of these remote cultures is felt strongly by Adams, as he negotiates his personal identity among their scattered remnants.
What particularly arrests me are the marks made by Adams's stitching, for which he uses a sewing machine. With its clear sense of contemporaneity, Adams's stitching emerges as his voice which refuses to disappear into the background designed for him by others.
