William Kentridge: A Poem That Is Not Our Own

Themes of migration, flight and processions in the multimedia art of William Kentridge

In more than three decades, William Kentridge (born 1955) has produced an oeuvre spanning diverse mediums including animated film, drawings, prints and rare books, stage production and sculpture. A Poem That Is Not Our Own establishes a link between his early drawings and films from the 1980s and 1990s and his most recent work, bringing into focus the thematic complex of migration, flight, and processions in his oeuvre. It illustrates how these themes first emerge in Kentridge’s early graphic work and grow more prominent over the years as he explores their potential in ever more opulent creations.

Included here are the first presentations of The Head & The Load, which premiered at the Tate Modern, London, in the summer of 2018. An extravagant production involving film projections, shadow play and an ensemble of performers, the sprawling procession, which defied conventional genre boundaries, shed light on a neglected chapter of history: Africa’s role in World War I.