Issa Ibrahim is an artist, musician, author and filmmaker living and working in Queens, New York.
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 Shows
3/14/2025 - 4/19/2025
I Wish I Had A Window
group show curated by Greg Roberts
& BEYOND Gallery at Narrative
590 Second Street, Oakland, CA.
Spotlight
New Artworks from the group exhibition ‘I Wish I Had A Window’
SHOP HERE
for works from the LP cover series and more in the show ‘I Wish I Had A Window’
Published from Routledge Press: MAD STUDIES READER
Interdisciplinary Innovations in Mental Health
The last few years have brought increased writings from activists, artists, scholars, and concerned clinicians that cast a critical and constructive eye on psychiatry, mental health care, and the cultural relations of mental difference. With particular focus on accounts of lived experience and readings that cover issues of epistemic and social injustice in mental health discourse, the Mad Studies Reader brings together voices that advance anti-sanist approaches to scholarship, practice, art, and activism in this realm.
This collection will be of interest to mental health clinicians; students and scholars of the arts, humanities and social sciences; and anyone who has been affected by mental difference, directly or indirectly, who is curious to explore new perspectives.
Issa has contributed a short, modern ghost story about asylums, Bob Dylan, and what Woody Guthrie left behind in Creedmoor Psychiatric Center.
Featured in the opening chapter Innovative Artists:
Woody Guthrie’s Brain
by Issa Ibrahim
“Ibrahim uses creative nonfiction to give us a surprising window into one of the most notorious aspects of our social responses to mental difference- the creation of asylums to confine those deemed “too other” to function in the normate world.”
Read story here
Click on image to order book
The Daily Play…new limited web series coming soon!
The Daily Play uses art to cast an unflinching eye on what may be civilization’s lowest point in modern history. These 15-minute videos feature “fake news” satire, musical vignettes and faux commercials with bitterly amusing takes on world politics and our bankrupt culture. It is a NY Times Op-Doc-style compendium of dubious News, as if on steroids. Everything you need to know is in the magazine's motto, "The least satisfying I told you so."
First episode dropping this spring.
Watch this space or check it out on my channel on YouTube.