Introduction to William Kentridge
William Kentridge is one of the most celebrated contemporary artists in the world. In the late 1980s and 1990s, he was known for his animated short films based on drawings that critiqued the Apartheid regime set up in South Africa, while also telling personal stories. For his 70th birthday, the German Museum Folkwang in Essen and the Dresden State Art Collections are organizing a large exhibition to celebrate his expansive artistic oeuvre.
The Retrospective "Listen to the Echo"
The retrospective "Listen to the Echo" is distributed over several places and includes diverse work and methods that research colonialism, social power, and personal responsibility in South Africa and beyond. The exhibition pursues the artistic development of William Kentridge from the late 1970s, as deep racist departments in his homeland. In addition to drawings and films of the renowned "drawings for projection", in which the social and political understream of life in apartheid in South Africa were examined, the show prints, sculptures, tapestries, and multi-channel filminates.
Who is William Kentridge?
The parents of Kentridge, born in 1955, were Jewish lawyers against apartheid and human rights. His father, Sydney Kentridge, represented South African leaders like Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu. Although apartheid ended in the nineties, "the gap of 300 years of exploitation and oppression is still a lot with us," Kentridge told DW about an era that remains an important topic in his work.
Explore "Your Relationship with the World"
The exhibitions in Dresden and Essen are organized and curated in close cooperation with William Kentridge, which has invested the full width of his artistic vision in the shows. "The idea of being an artist is that all different media are open to them to explore the world," said Kentridge in an interview. "That means you to explore her to her relationship with the world as an artist." The exhibition includes new sound and video installations, including the film "Oh to Beliear in another world" (2022), which are located around the borders of the artistic utopias.
The Exhibition
The exhibition "Listen to the Echo" runs from September 4, 2025, to January 18, 2026, in the Folkwang Museum in Essen and from September 6, 2025, at the art collections of the State of Dresden. As part of the exhibition, the Dresden power plant Mitte Museum "The Center for the Wender Good Idea", which was founded by Kentridge and visual artist Bronwyn Lace in Johannesburg as a space for interdisciplinary ideas, combined the text, performance, and dance. The center promotes and argues that in the act of playing you can recognize the things that you did not know in advance but knew somewhere in them.
Artistic Development
The exhibition also includes works by Kentridge as Puppet Theater Director, which are created in the statement. A ceremonial procession with a choir and band will march through the city center of Dresden, which will pass one of the most unusual monumental procession paintings, the Dresden procession of the princes [depicting the history of the local Saxon ruling dynasty]. The retrospective "Listen to the Echo" is a celebration of William Kentridge’s artistic development and his contributions to the world of art.
