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
7/10/2025 - 8/16/2025
Life’s A Party
curated by Joakim Noah & Judith Berman
Fountain House Gallery
702 9th Ave, NYC
Work featured in ‘LIFE’S A PARTY’ group exhibition at Fountain House Gallery
Party Girl, acrylic on unstretched canvas, 72” x 21.5”, 2025
This devotee of fun shimmies and struts around her many cats on her way to the club. Carrying a chihuahua in her Dior bag, she’s preoccupied by the party, live-streaming on her phone, as her orange tabby laser beams its approval, bathing her in “likes”, “hearts” and “thumbs ups”. Amid the festive color and audacious fashion, her tattoos juxtaposing “let’s party” with “no future” reveal a darker, more somber truth.
The Nine Muses, crayon, ink, acrylic on canvas, 14" x 14", 2023
Nine friends, of varying races, religions and temperaments, collect at a party where you the viewer have partied too hard, now on your back looking up. It is an image that came to me in a deluded dream when I believed I was visited by the nine muses, giving me renewed hope and creative sustenance.
GEwIZ- Touching Madness
debut album out now!
“On a rainy, muggy, New York City summer afternoon in August 2009 I was willingly abducted onto the spaceship of my dear friend and filmmaker G-oh. There, in a whirlwind six-hour session, interrupted by a walk on the Highline and lunch at the Silly Diner, we wrote a gaggle of songs. Presented here in spontaneous form, complete in their incompletion, with flubbed lines and sketchy arrangements, are the songs that will become ‘GEwIZ! Touching Madness’…or some such…
Travel with me, full of wonder with guitar and notebook in hand.
Come to the twentieth floor, in a labyrinthine living space, where two pioneers, G-oh and Izzy AHA, reach beyond the parameters of pop music, searching for poetic moments beyond the usual, that reflect who they are, who you are, who we are…” – Issa Ibrahim
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 14-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 later this year.
Watch this space or check it out on my channel on YouTube.