Joburg premiere

History as collage

The Wits Art Museum hosted the South African premiere of William Kentridge’s (BA 1977, DLitt honoris causa 2004) Oh to Believe in Another World on 27 July 2022 in celebration of the University’s centenary and the museum’s first decade.

A select group of guests explored a mixture of Kentridge’s charcoal drawings, collaged lithographs, mixed media puppets and bronze sculptures. The centerpiece film, an installation made in response to Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10 in E minor, Op. 93, later accompanied a live orchestral performance by the Mzansi National Philharmonic Orchestra (conducted by Joseph Young) at the Linder Auditorium.

The protagonists in the film include: pianist and composer Elmira Nazirova; poet Vladimir Mayakovsky; author Lilya Brik; Vladimir Lenin; Leon Trotsky; Joseph Stalin and Shostakovich himself.

It glimpses at four decades of the Soviet Union. It appears to be set inside an abandoned Soviet museum, but it’s a tiny cardboard structure and the viewer is guided by a miniature camera looking at a Lilliputian world. The music is chaotic, melancholic and grandiose, while the scenes are punctuated with texts from Mayakovsky’s writing: “We’ll chase humanity into happiness with an iron fist”.

Kentridge was awarded the Queen Sonja Lifetime Achievement Award in June 2022 to acknowledge his lifetime contribution to graphic art and printmaking.

• Oh to Believe in Another World is currently on exhibition at the Goodman Gallery in London until 12 November 2022.

• The Royal Academy of Arts hosts a major autumn exhibition of Kentridge’s work until 11 December 2022. Also see Professor Stephen Clingman’s (BA 1977, BA Hons 1978) catalogue for the exhibition.