Soviet and Apartheid-era Cultures in the ‘moving’ art of William Kentridge: The Politics of Aesthetics: The Aesthetics of Politics

Tamar Garb in Conversation with William Kentridge

Focussing on William Kentridge’s engagement with Russian Constructivism, Suprematism, and dissident modernist aesthetics via the work of Russian writers like Gogol, composer Shostakovitch, and film maker Vertov, this dialogue will explore the conditions of making art in the Soviet Union and Apartheid South Africa. What is the role of the artist as dissident, how do artistic languages encode dissent, affirm life, and refuse instrumentalization under conditions of duress and coercion? Are there similarities between Apartheid era censorial legislation, terror and silencing and those of Soviet era prohibitions and punishments?

William Kentridge

From his base in Johannesburg, where he was born, William Kentridge works across artistic mediums, often with dozens of collaborators, to make art that is grounded in history, literature, politics and science. His work has been seen in museums and galleries internationally since the 1990s and can be found in private collections and institutions across the globe. He has directed operas for the Metropolitan Opera in New York, La Scala in Milan, the English National Opera in London, the Salzburg Festival and others. His original works for stage combine performance, projections, shadow play, voice and music. Kentridge is the recipient of honorary doctorates from several universities including Yale, Columbia and the University of London. He has been awarded the Kyoto Prize (2010), the Princesa de Asturias Award in 2017 and the Praemium Imperiale Prize in 2019.

Tamar Garb

Tamar Garb Durning Lawrence Professor in History of Art, University College London. She has published widely on questions of gender, sexuality, the woman artist and the body. Her recent work addresses post-apartheid culture and art as well as the history of photographic practices in Africa. Key publications include Bodies of Modernity: Figure and Flesh in fin de siècle France, (1996), The Painted Face, Portraits of Women in France 1814 -1914 (2007). The Body in Time: Figures of Femininity in Late Nineteenth- Century France; The Painted Face, Portraits of Women in France 1814– 1914 (Yale University Press, 2007); and Sisters of the Brush: Women’s Artistic Culture in Late Nineteenth Century Paris (Yale University Press, 1994). Selected exhibitions she has curated include: “Land Marks/Home Lands; Contemporary Art from South Africa” at Haunch of Venison, London in 2008; “Figures and Fictions: Contemporary South African Photography” at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London in 2011; “Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive” at the Walther Collection, New York, Ulm and Berlin, 2014–2015; and “Made Routes: Vivienne Koorland and Berni Searle” at the Richard Saltoun Gallery, London in 2019.

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Photo credit: Norbert Miguletz