The form is one of collage, and the larger proposition is that one needs to understand history as a form of collage - William Kentridge, 2022
Oh To Believe in Another World is William Kentridge’s first solo exhibition with Goodman Gallery in London and marks thirty years of representation by the gallery.
The exhibition premieres the artist’s latest major work, an immersive five-channel projection made in response to Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No.10. The installation lends the exhibition its evocative title - referencing utopia, our wish for it and the shadow it always casts.
Oh To Believe in Another World expands on decades of critical engagement with life and culture under the Soviet Union, explored in Kentridge’s I am not me, the horse is not mine (2008) and The Nose (2010), based on the absurdist opera of the same name directed by Shostakovich in the 1920s, which was suppressed shortly after opening.
Of Shostakovich’s pieces, his 10th Symphony – composed in anticipation of Stalin’s death – has always been most pertinent for Kentridge because of its humanity: “we can still feel the emotional journey of the symphony, independent of its historical moorings.”
Shostakovich’s life story involved navigating a complex relationship to the state of the Soviet Union, which provides the core inspiration for the projection. While the Russian composer and pianist was initially lauded as a sound voice to project Soviet values, Shostakovich was denounced twice under Stalin’s rule, leading him to fear for his life and compose music under intense state pressure. His 10th Symphony violated many of the Soviet restrictions on cultural production, experimenting formally with contrast and ambivalent tonalities, and was only made public once Stalin died in 1953.
The exhibition brings together a new body of work – charcoal drawings, collaged lithographs, mixed media puppets, bronze sculptures and a cardboard model for the projection – which reference the central projection in various ways and invite audiences to engage with Kentridge’s multidisciplinary practice in the round.
Concurrently, Kentridge’s largest UK survey to date is held at the Royal Academy of Arts in London this September, followed by performances from The Centre for the Less Good Idea at The Barbican in October. Oh To Believe in Another World shares its name with the eighth episode of a new series about life in the studio, titled Self-Portrait As A Coffee Pot (2022), which takes audiences behind the scenes to show the making of the projection and is set to premiere at international film festivals in Toronto and London this season. In November, Kentridge will open another major survey exhibition at The Broad in Los Angeles. Kentridge’s performance The Head & The Load, first seen at Tate Modern in 2018, travels to the Adrienne Arsht Center in Miami in December.
Artworks
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Oh To Believe in Another World: A five-channel projection
The exhibition’s centrepiece constitutes a retrospective look at four decades of the Soviet Union – from the death of Lenin in the 1920s; the suicide of Mayakovsky in the 1930s; the assassination of Trotsky in the 1940s; and the death of Stalin in the 1950s. For Kentridge, “the report that remains of these decades is in the music of Shostakovich, the one who against expectation got away, and survived”.
According to the artist: “the characters in the projection were all participants in the politics and culture of their time and embody the simultaneous hope in revolutionary ideals and the disillusionment of their failure in the lived world”. These protagonists include: pianist and composer Elmira Nazirova; poet Vladimir Mayakovsky; author Lilya Brik; Vladimir Lenin; Leon Trotsky; Joseph Stalin and Shostakovich himself.
The projection is set inside what appears to be an abandoned Soviet museum propped up by ageing pillars. It is made of cardboard and sits on a table in the artist’s studio. Using a miniature camera, we are guided – as if in a dream – through the deserted halls into a host of symbolic imagined spaces, including a community theatre hall, an empty public swimming pool (with a clock permanently set to 12:22), a quarry and a corridor of vitrines holding stuffed historical figures.
The audio component includes the collaging of music by Russian composers, sampled and sliced to cacophonous effect to create an assemblage of sound. The work leans into the “deliberately dissonant, muddled stream of sounds” that defined Stalin’s damning response to Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (1934). By embracing the creative possibilities of “muddle” and fragmentation, denied to Shostakovich for decades, Kentridge turns Stalin’s denouncement into a quality to be celebrated.
Artist Bio
William Kentridge (b. 1955, Johannesburg, South Africa) is internationally acclaimed for his drawings, films, theatre and opera productions.
In 2024, in Venice, Kentridge premiered a new nine-episode video series, 'Self-Portriait as a Coffee Pot,' - a site-specific installation curated by long-time collaborator and curator Carolyn Christov Bakargiev at the Arsenale Institute for Politics of Representation. Following this, in October, MUBI presented: William Kentridge’s, ‘Self-Portrait as a Coffee-Pot’ Premiere in New York.
In conjunction with the world premiere of his newly commissioned opera, 'The Great Yes, The Great No,' which debuted at LUMA Arles in July 2024, the solo exhibition, 'Je n’attends plus' (I’m Not Waiting Any Longer) presents a collection of major works, some of which had not been seen in Europe before.
Kentridge’s largest UK survey to date was held at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 2022. An iteration of Kentridge's Royal Academy survey opened at the Taipei Museum of Fine Arts in May 2024. In the same year Kentridge opened another major survey exhibition, 'In Praise of Shadows,' at The Broad, Los Angeles. In 2023, this exhibition traveled to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Kentridge’s work has been seen in museums across the globe since the 1990s, including the Luma Foundation, France (2024); Arsenale Institute for Politics of Representation, Venice (2024); Taipei Fine Arts Museum (2024); Museum of Modern Art, New York (1999, 2005, 2010); Albertina Museum, Vienna (2010); Musée du Louvre, Paris (2010); National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea; Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid (2015); Kunstmuseum Basel (2019); Norval Foundation, Cape Town (2019). The artist has also participated in biennale’s including Documenta in Kassel (2012, 2002, 1997) and the Venice Biennale (2015, 2013, 2005, 1999, 1993).
Collections include: 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 lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa.
