William Kentridge (b. 1955 in South Africa, based in Johannesburg) began creating his signature ‘drawings in motion’ in the late 1980s. These animated works are created through the laborious process of photographing charcoal-and-pastel drawings with a 35mm motion picture camera, adding new marks and erasures frame by frame to make the drawings ‘move.’ As a continuous record of ceaselessly changing drawings, marks that could not be erased completely are left behind as the animation progresses. These indelible marks contribute a stately air to his expression that could be described as the accumulation of time itself.

Drawing for the film Felix in Exile [Felix's room/Nandi with theodolite]   1994 charcoal and pastel on paper collection of the artist   ©the artist

Kentridge's works are deeply affected by the history and contemporary social circumstances of South Africa, and his series of films entitled 9 Drawings for Projection, imbued with the pain inflicted by his country's history of apartheid, have drawn a great deal of attention from all over the world — beginning with such exhibitions as the Johannesburg Biennale in 1995 or Documenta X in 1997 — as an artistic expression/practice of anti-Eurocentric postcolonial criticism. However, a closer reading shows that, beyond their sociopolitical appearances, Kentridge's works have consistently been engaged in the verification and storytelling of the universal and primordial issues faced by humans in the modern age: the good intentions and the collapse of an individual in his or her resistance to the status quo; the ambiguity of protection and oppression; the effort to reintegrate one's fragmented self and the impossibility of doing so; and so on.

9 Drawings for Projection   1989-2003 Installation view at The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto collection of the artist   ©the artist photo: Shikata Kunihiro

The artist's persistent use of the simple technique that he himself has called “stone-age filmmaking” could also be understood as a result of his intent to seek the origins of modern narrative creation, or to uncover the pathology of colonialism from within the Enlightenment as he travels back through history. His unsophisticated animation technique stands in direct opposition to the contemporary mainstream of sophisticated cel and computer-generated animation. The extremely original and powerful expression of his works, however, demonstrate that old-fashioned hand-drawn animation on paper still holds an enormous potential as an expressive medium, and his works have influenced younger generations of artists since the early 1990s.

Mine (still image)   1991 animated film, 5'50" collection of the artist   ©the artist

William Kentridge is one of the most closely watched artists in the world, with a large-scale international exhibition that opened at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in March 2009, subsequently traveling to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (Texas), the Norton Museum of Art (West Palm Beach, Florida), the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Albertina (Vienna), the Israel Museum (Jerusalem), and the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam).

The Japanese exhibition — Kentridge's first solo exhibition in the country — is the result of three years of close work between the Museums and the artist himself. 19 film works (including 4 film installations), 36 drawings, and 63 prints will be exhibited, covering the full scope of Kentridge's artistic activities, from the 9 Drawings for Projection (1989-2003), a representative body of work that is centered on the history of South Africa, to I Am Not Me, the Horse Is Not Mine (2008), his latest work based on the Shostakovich opera The Nose.

His Majesty Comrade Nose, from the film installation I Am Not Me, the Horse Is Not Mine (still image)   2008 collection of The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto   ©the artist

Born in 1955. Lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Studied Politics, African Studies, and Fine Arts in Johnnesburg, and mime and theatre in Paris.

Begins creating and presenting hand-drawn animated films-composed of charcoal and pastel drawings photographed with a 35mm motion picture camera-at the end of the 1980s. Creates works full of poetic sentiment that address the past and present of his homeland, including apartheid.

Exhibited at Documenta 10 (1997), the São Paulo Art Biennial (1998), the Venice Biennale (1999), the Carnegie International (1999/2000), the Kwangju Biennale (2000), the Yokohama Triennale (2001), Documenta 11 (2002), the Biennale of Sydney (2008), etc.

Recent exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Art, currently traveling to Fort Worth, West Palm Beach (Florida), New York, Vienna, Jerusalem, and Amsterdam through 2009-11.

Works in a variety of fields, including acting, stage direction, and writing.

Photo by John Hodgkiss