A woman in William Kentridge’s studio is belting out an aria into a cell phone, surrounded by a swirl of sketches and drawings.
On the other end of the line is the renowned composer Philip Miller, sitting at a piano in Kentridge’s Cape Town home. The improvisational recording is just one element that makes up pieces like I am not me, the horse is not mine, which debuted at the 2008 Sydney Biennial in a video installation that featured an operatic score and Kentridge’s charcoal drawings.
The South African artist spoke to Art21 about how his experimental, often collaborative approach to art-making lends itself to an “understanding of the world as process rather than as fact.” Kentridge began his career making charcoal sketches that reflected on his country’s fraught history of apartheid and political instability, and in 1989 began to translate his prints and drawings into film. Read more