Curated by Mark Rosenthal
Colonialism’s legacy is central to the work of William Kentridge, whose fiercely satiric narratives often contrast the privileged and the dispossessed. This major survey, co-organized by the Norton Museum of Art, presents some seventy-five pieces—drawings, prints, films, sculptures, and books from the mid-1980s to this year—and emphasizes the Johannesburg native’s recent and never-before-exhibited works, as well as his decades-long engagement with theater. To this end, curator Mark Rosenthal presents thematic sections on Kentridge’s staging of Mozart’s Magic Flute; his forthcoming presentation of Dmitri Shostakovich’s opera The Nose; and projects inspired by Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi. Time has broadened the artist’s political scope; expect Kentridge’s nuanced investigations into the psychology of oppression—but on a vaster scale.
