William Kentridge

Forty years of work by William Kentridge (Johannesburg, 1955) come together in I am not me, the horse is not mine, a retrospective exhibition combining drawing, animated film, sculpture, printmaking, installation and video with an extensive look at his major theatre and opera productions. The exhibition spans ten rooms and also features new, site-specific work: a monumental wall drawing around the figure of Ubu and a tribute to South African choreographer Dada Masilo on the staircase.

Kentridge began his career as an artist during the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, and that political and historical layering still runs through his work, alongside an enduring interest in the absurd as a form of realism. Central to the exhibition is his studio in Johannesburg, which it evokes both spatially and thematically: it begins and ends there, with work from his major theatre productions in between. Brussels is no unfamiliar territory for Kentridge: his opera Faustus in Africa! premiered here in 1995, and in 1998 the venue held his first solo exhibition in Europe. Nearly thirty years later, this return marks a renewal of that bond.

Image: William Kentridge, Tightrope of Our Hope, 2023