Issa Ibrahim is an artist, musician, author and filmmaker living and working in Queens, N.Y.
Insanity Plea Patient Out on Parole.
Chocolate Child of the Nuclear Age.
Black Bohemian Man Out of Time.
Raised from a living death in Creedmoor Psychiatric Center, Issa Ibrahim could be anybody. And he is you, or someone you know, who has run afoul of “The System” and fallen through the cracks of society. Same old story…why should you care? Maybe because there’s a bright and shiny rainbow at the end, and doesn’t everyone like happy endings?
Issa Ibrahim has been reborn. He has come into full bloom creatively while living under the most psychologically restrictive conditions. In 2016 Chicago Review Press published The Hospital Always Wins: A Memoir detailing his experiences in a broken mental health system including spending 20-years in an asylum following a horrific family tragedy.
Artist, Author, Musician, Filmmaker.
Above all a Survivor.
Like a soul entombed, Issa has come forth with tall tales of death, using humor, bite, toothpicks and bubblegum. Chronicling the various ghouls, grave robbers, maggots, witches and spirits that drifted through him in his quest to understand himself. Released from bondage, Issa re-experiences life decades later, like Rip Van Winkle or Captain America…except twice as hard cuz he’s black.
Come explore the nether regions of the soul with Issa Ibrahim...It just may re-kindle your will to live.
One fan raves-
“You take the raw materials of your existence and experiences and transmute them in art, music and a profound glimpse into realms others may not have been fortunate enough to see without your guidance.”
Current and Upcoming
9/4/2025 - 9/29/2025
25th ANNIVERSARY
curated by Martha Henry
Fountain House Gallery
702 9th Ave, NYC
Work featured in 25th Anniversary group exhibition at Fountain House Gallery
Superman on the Rocks, oil on canvas, 30” x 40”, 1994
Knocked out in one whirlwind overnight in the ward laundry room of Creedmoor Psychiatric Center. In this depiction of the Man of Steel with feet of clay, he languishes in a small, dark apartment on a beat up Lay-Z-Boy smoking a cigarette, nursing a beer and surfing the channels. While most are amused by worn-out Superman, relaxing, obviously after a hard day’s work, showing that he’s “one of us,” I prefer to see it as a person of tremendous potential and ability letting it go to waste. I identified with that barely three years into my hospitalization. In the end it is a self-portrait telling the story of the artist, with all his great potential, sitting in zombified limbo, wasting away in an insane asylum. It is also a coded commentary on the sad and sorry state of America.
New Album Out Now…available everywhere!
If you’re a fan of D.I.Y. Indie Psycho Folk and Bedroom Pop, and dig songs about MAGA nuts, Malcolm X, NYC, corporate culture, lottery winners and losers, freedom from the asylum, pure love, drug abuse, and things that go bump in the night, then you’re ready to listen to ‘God’s Radio’
Check out new videos from the album dropping every week on YouTube.
Read a review in Art BreakOUT