William Kentridge
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Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) Montalegre 5, 08001 Barcelona

The CCCB presents a exhibition about William Kentridge with the aim not just of showing the multiple facets of a fundamental creator, but also creating a space for reflection that raises uncomfortable questions about the challenges of post-colonialism and the dialectic between power zones and the margins of exclusion in contemporary European society.
Convinced that the ethical duty of any artist involves undermining the pillars of dogma and monolithic certainties with the tools of uncertainty, ambiguity and contradiction, South African artist William Kentridge has constructed a tentacular, polymorphic creative discourse that has consolidated his place on the contemporary world art scene. A well-placed witness of the radical political changes that his country has undergone, between the collective guilt of apartheid and the scars that continue to mark the present, Kentridge is an artist with deep roots in his homeland. His city of Johannesburg is still bruised by recent history, but also functions as the nerve centre for the creation of new networks and channels of communication, of new ways of imagining collective futures.
Curated by Jaap Guldemond, William Kentridge offers a multifaceted portrait of the creator, in the form of a dialogue between the pieces of the series of animations Drawings for Projection (a critical chronicle of South African history, from apartheid to a murky present), some of the drawings that bear witness to the laborious creative process of these pieces, the tapestries in the series The Nose (inspired by Nikolai Gogol’s short story of the same name), and The Porter, projections frozen in time. The exhibition includes More Sweetly Play the Dance, the spectacular moving frieze that evokes the dynamics of a ritual procession, depicting a stream of refugees escaping a crisis.
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