The ongoing Kochi-Muziris Biennale presents William Kentridge’s impressionable line-up videos, which portray some of the major societal issues persistent in the South African artist’s continent, such as isolation, discrimination, domination and slavery owing to socioeconomic differences. His artworks are on view at the biennale that began on December 12, 2018 and will continue for more than 100 days, through March 29, 2019 in Kochi, India. Describing Kentridge’s work, Kochi-Muziris Biennale stated in its press release, “The South African’s work is a processional project casting silhouetted figures stepping and dancing in line to the sounds of a brass band across eight screens. The 15-minute visuals in one loop essay figures carrying objects made from cutouts of the artist’s own drawings, adorning a sea-facing rectangular room at the main venue of the 108-day festival on till March 29.”The 63-year old artist, who was born in Johannesburg reveals, “The procession is a form I have used many times before, trying to encompass in the work the muchness of the people in the world. And to record the fact that even in the 21st century human foot-power remains the primary means of locomotion…. And we are still locked in the manual labor of individual bodies as a way of making the world.” Commenting further on the image of the procession, where people are pulling or carrying their baggage and states, the artist states, “It travels back to the huge movements of people at the end of the Second World War (1945). And further, to the exodus of Muslims from the Balkans (in the early 20th and 19th centuries).” He calls it both an immediate and a contemporary image. As the press release of the biennale mentions, the image of the procession takes us back to the paintings of the Spanish Romantic painter, Francisco Goya, who was educated in Kentridge’s city’s University of the Witwatersrand and Johannesburg Art Foundation. Kentridge notes, “It goes back more recently to photographs of refugees fleeing Rwanda (since the 1994 genocide) to nearby countries such as Tanzania, Zambia and Uganda. All the movement that still exists across Africa.” Commenting on the details of the artist’s work, the press release of the biennale stated, “Kentridge’s biennale work also intersperses scenes of political protests: people throwing pamphlets and holding microphones, even as they look aggrieved that they go unheard. He also points out that the procession films focus on the carriers as much as their issues.’’http://www.blouinartinfo.com/Founder: Louise Blouin
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