Sobriety, Obesity and Growing Old

William Kentridge’s multidisciplinary art practice includes drawing, animation, books, printmaking, collage, performance, and installation. To make his films, Kentridge developed a unique, labor-intensive process in which he erases and alters a single drawing while recording the changes with stop-motion camerawork. The result is a hybrid of film and drawing that has been highly praised for both its manipulation of media and its ability to look at troubling social issues in a way that is neither sentimental nor aggrandized. Kentridge first came to prominence in the 1990s with his Drawings for Projection series, which addresses the South African history of apartheid. Following an episodic configuration, the films feature two characters, businessman Soho Eckstein and artist Felix Teitelbaum. Through these complex, fictional figures, Kentridge examines the wide, political landscape of national trauma, while simultaneously exploring the deeper forces of lifelike renewal and destruction.