William Kentridge: Listen to the Echo

On the occasion of his 70th birthday, the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden and the Museum Folkwang in Essen are dedicating a major double exhibition to William Kentridge, who works in an interdisciplinary manner. Works from four decades will be shown: early graphic series on apartheid and its end, but also drawings and films from the famous series "Drawings for Projection" (1989-2020), in which Kentridge addresses the history of his hometown of Johannesburg. The importance of the procession in his work is reflected in the monumental video installation "More Sweetly play the Dance" (2015) and the large-format woodcut series "Triumphs and Laments" (2016-2019). Particularly important in Kentridge's work is his artistic examination of colonialism, but also of social utopias and their failure using the example of Soviet socialism. Recent works from the context of 'The Great Yes, The Great No' (2024), a chamber opera created in cooperation with the 'Centre for the Less Good Idea' in Johannesburg, founded by Kentridge, once again show the enormous artistic range of his artistic work.