William Kentridge

‘Cape Silver’ (2018) and ‘Her’ (2022) are monumental reinterpretations of William Kentridge’s renowned Glyphs series, which explore the fluidity of symbols and the subjective nature of perception. Given his extraordinarily multi-disciplinary practice and passion for opera and stage design, Kentridge relished the opportunity to rework both ‘Cape Silver’ and ‘Her’ in colossal dimensions to further investigate scaling as an instrument to create and alter meaning. The remarkable bronzes boldly interact with each other and their Alpine setting, occupying and defining the space around them.

The extraordinary bronzes that make up the Glyphs stem from ‘Kentridgean signs’ developed through different practices, spanning not only sculpture and drawing, but also opera, theater costumes, photography and animation, as well his deep understanding and appreciation of his artistic predecessors. [3] Yet crucially the meanings of Kentridge’s Glyphs are universal and evolving. Although the bronzes might suggest fixed definitions and ‘a kind of diary’ for the artist, he also emphasizes that their messages are something ‘to be excavated by viewers,’ allowing them to be read in multiple ways. [4]

Kentridge’s Glyphs epitomize the artist’s unique visual lexicon, demonstrating his ingenious ability to blur genres while moving between two and three dimensions and across disparate scales. As with most of his work, his Glyphs started as drawings, in this case as a collection of drawings and paper maquettes. The symbolism of Kentridge’s Glyphs is multi-layered—these symbols, both individually and as groups, can be found across the artist’s wider practice, including his drawings, films, sculptures, and even taking form as opera costumes in some cases.

One of the most prominent artists working today, William Kentridge was born in 1955 in Johannesburg, South Africa, where he currently lives and works. Growing up under the destructive pall of apartheid and as the son of human rights lawyers, Kentridge developed a strong sense of social responsibility from an early age. Over the past five decades, his practice has parsed and questioned the historical record—responding to the past as it ineluctably shapes our present—and, in doing so, has created a world that both mirrors and shadows the inequities and absurdities of our own. By employing varied media, the artist seeks to make sense of the world and the construction of meaning through the use of historical resources, including maps, language and everyday imagery.