Self-Portrait as a Coffee Pot Film
William Kentridge | Self-Portrait as a Coffee Pot | Venice 2024
WILLIAM KENTRIDGE
Head-Image
An exhibition curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev at Arsenale Institute for Politics of Representation, Venice on view from 17 April through 24 November 2024
'Starting in early 2020 during the first lockdown in Johannesburg, I returned to the solitary activities of the studio: making drawings and animations – trying to work out the relationship, in a way, between the activities of the studio and thinking. A body of drawings emerged over the ensuing two years. Their texts are a mixture of phrases from the lockdown, diaries, and other thoughts of lines from poems that I have been reading for some time. Nine correlating films, each between 22 to 36 minutes, have become a series on thinking in material – on the artist as a semi-skilled manual labourer, of what thoughts come from doing things with your hands. The films as a series are neither lectures nor documentaries, but a means in which the medium itself becomes a way of exploring an idea. The world is invited into the studio. There it is taken apart, and the re-arranged fragments are sent back out into the world as a drawing, a film, a performance. The studio is a space for making a drawing, a film; but also a space of making meaning.'
- William Kentridge
PREVIEW THE FILM
I. A NATURAL HISTORY OF THE STUDIO
An introduction to the interior of the artist’s studio, a physical and a metaphoric space. What takes place here?
II. SELF-PORTRAIT AS A COFFEE POT
A guide to self-portraiture. Are we able to see ourselves? What is the self?
III. VANISHING POINTS
A consideration of per spective. How do we perceive the landscapes in front of us? How do we under stand our own vantage points within them?
IV. FINDING OUR FATE
What are the limits to our ability to choose our fates? Do we make our own destinies? Were there different brushstrokes we could have made?
V. AS IF
Questioning the seduction of coherence. How do we make sense of fragments of information to construct meaning?
VI. HARVEST OF DEVOTION
Investigating colonialism and its paradoxes. What do we do with history and its monuments, today?
VII. METAMORPHOSIS
Illuminating the instability of meaning. How do ideas transform into language, objects, and images? How are we sure we know what is meant?
VIII. OH TO BELIEVE IN ANOTHER WORLD
Is a better world possible? Can we imagine it?
IX. A DEFENCE OF OPTIMISM
Can we put back together that which is broken? Can art illuminate a path forward?
Still from Self-Portrait as a Coffee-Pot, Episode 4: Finding One’s Fate, 2022, HD Video, 31 min 02 sec © William Kentridge. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2024. Courtesy the artist, Goodman Gallery and Hauser & Wirth
William Kentridge (b.1955, South Africa) is internationally acclaimed for his drawings, films, theatre and opera productions.
Kentridge’s work is held in collections including MoMA, New York; Tate Modern, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Haus der Kunst, Munich; Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah; National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto; Guggenheim, Abu Dhabi and Zeitz MoCAA, Cape Town.
Kentridge’s largest UK survey to date was held at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 2022. In the same year Kentridge opened another major survey exhibition, In Praise of Shadows, at The Broad, Los Angeles. In 2023 this exhibition travelled to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Kentridge’s work has been seen in museums across the globe since the 1990s, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Albertina Museum, Vienna: Musée du Louvre in Paris, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea; Reina Sofia museum, Madrid, Kunstmuseum in Basel; and Norval Foundation in Cape Town. The artist has also participated in biennale’s including Documenta in Kassel (2012, 2002,1997) and the Venice Biennale (2015, 2013, 2005, 1999, 1993).