William Kentridge
William Kentridge’s practice spans drawing and printmaking, film, animation, and opera. Shaped by the socio-political context of South Africa, Kentridge’s work challenges the apparent fixity of historical record through playful, theatrical forms that embrace ambiguity and resist certainty. At Valdemars Slot, the artist guides visitors through the palace with a sequence of installations that present its heritage as frag- mentary, partial, and open to interpretation.
Studio Horse 3, 2026 greets visitors in the entrance hall with a life-size self-portrait: a paper cut-out of Kentridge seated astride a tripod horse, like a makeshift prop. This humorous anti-monument to ‘great men’ mirrors the adjacent Kings Room, where painted monarchs line the walls in ostentatious ceremony. Incorporating maps and records from the palace archives, Kentridge unsettles the authority of historical representation by exposing the art and artifice through which it’s constructed.
Fire Walker, 2026 stretches across the steep attic staircase, fragmenting as the viewer draws closer. Originally conceived as a public monument in Johannesburg, this image references the street vendors who enter the city at dawn, carrying burning braziers to sell food to commuting labourers. Bringing into view a group of women often excluded by historical accounts, the installation also conjures the servants who once used the attic stairs. Here, its fractured form evokes precarious lives and the distortions intrinsic to historical hindsight.
In the vast attic, two films offer intimate insights into Kentridge’s working process. Self- portrait as a Coffee-Pot, 2022 and 2ndary Revisions, 2022 explore how his experimental, cross-disciplinary approach opens up space for unexpected discovery. Screened alongside the collaborative series The Long Minute, curated by Bronwyn Lace, these films reflect how Kentridge’s methodology informs the short-form works produced by The Centre for the Less Good Idea, co-founded with Lace in 2016.
Photo: David Stjernholm
“Often, you start with a good idea, It might seem crystal clear at first, but when you take it off the proverbial drawing board, cracks and fissures emerge in its surface, and they cannot be ignored. It is in following the secondary ideas, those less good ideas coined to address the first idea’s cracks, that The Centre nurtures, arguing that in the act of playing with an idea, you can recognise those things you didn’t know in advance but knew somewhere inside of you.”
— William Kentridge, 2016
Photo: David Stjernholm
Artist Bio
William Kentridge (b. 1955, Johannesburg)
William Kentridge lives and works in Johannesburg. Recent solo exhibitions include Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield (2025); MFA Houston, Texas (2023); Royal Academy of Arts, London (2022); and Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland (2019). A major retrospective opened at Whitechapel Gallery, London in 2016 and toured internationally, including to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, and Museum der Moderne Salzburg (2017). Kentridge has participated in Documenta and the Venice Biennale multiple times.