BY HOLLY T .
Actually … I hesitated before deciding to write about Why Should I Hesitate , the largest-ever retrospective of the art of William Kentridge at the Deichtorhallen . I saw one of Kentridge ’ s animated films in the 2002 exhibition in Kassel and was mesmerized by his revolving , mirrored table installation at the Kunsthalle in Bremen ( also in this show ). And yet , somehow , I imagined a text-heavy , literally black-andwhite exhibition with all of Kentridge ’ s work based on drawing . As a South African making art about colonialism and apartheid , I had assumed Kentridge was Black , and when I first looked into the current Hamburg exhibition , I was perplexed and disappointed to discover a white 65-year-old ( always dressed in black pants and white shirt !) whose talks and interviews abound on the internet . Thank goodness Thelma F ., Charis H ., and Ulrike H . posted their excitement about the show in the AWCH Facebook Art Group .
Though always involving drawing , Kentridge ’ s true artistic home is animation and theater . Drawn triptychs and prints in the show document an early predilection for working with multiple frames and multiple states of the same image . In 1975 , while a student of politics and African studies and taking art classes in Johannesburg , Kentridge drew directly onto a roll of film to create his first one-minute silent film , Discourse on a Chair , shown at the beginning of the exhibition . During the following years , he studied pantomime and worked as an actor and set designer in theater and as an art director in television and film . In the late 1980s , he returned to animation . The animated works are all worth watching !
“ Putting Drawings to Work ,” the subtitle of the exhibition , refers not only to their use in animation and other media but to their function in calling attention to social injustice . More Sweetly Play the Dance of 2017 , a 40-meter-long panorama projection created in 2015 , addresses the Ebola epidemic and refugee crisis . In it , drawn skeletons perform a dance macabre with real actors , dancers , and musicians as shadow figures parading jerkily past the viewer to brass-band music through a desolate drawn landscape . Like them , the hinged , paper silhouette figures on which Kentridge ’ s “ Porter ” series of large tapestries are based , bear or drag heavy loads against backdrops of colonial maps of Europe . The porters here are the forgotten one million Africans who carried supplies and machine parts for European soldiers in the First World War , 300,000 of whom died . The tapestries , like Kentridge ’ s large-scale , multi-panel woodcuts , were created by many hands — collaboration is paramount to this sociable and socially responsible artist .
The exhibition is pertinent to Hamburg , which long profited from colonial shipping and trading . Why Should I Hesitate is a quote from a porter about serving European colonial powers . Kentridge applies it to himself as a white African standing up for his Black compatriots . It is a question many of us can ask ourselves in view of past and present racial injustices in America .
William Kentridge : Porter Series : Norwége , Sueéde et Danemark , 2005 , Tapestry , 274 x 203 cm © William Kentridge
William Kentridge : More Sweetly Play the Dance , 2015
Installation at Eye Filmmuseum , Amsterdam , 2015 Photography : Studio Hans Wilschut Courtesy William Kentridge Studio
48 In Hamburg