“Welcoming the world, disassembling it, rebuilding it”
A vibrant trait, a sign that is memory and movement, poetry and politics. The Spoleto68 manifesto bears the signature of William Kentridge, one of the most influential artists of our time. Born in Johannesburg in 1955, Kentridge has built a rich, composite, revelatory language that combines the codes of drawing, theater, cinema and music in a story that delves into collective and personal history. His works are places of stratification and resonance, of the past that rewrites the present and is rewritten in the present: art, in short, as a game of thought.
Raised in South Africa during the segregationist regime, he studied art before moving to Paris, where he graduated from Jacques Lecoq's mime school, deepening his acting and theatrical direction. From the encounter between visual and performing arts, as early as the Seventies, a unique and recognizable expressive research was born. In his work, dominated by black and white, he deals with complex themes such as apartheid, colonialism and totalitarianism, accompanied by dreamlike parts, lyrical nuances or comic pieces.
This year the Festival welcomes its creative universe in its entirety, hosting the show at the Teatro Nuovo Gian Carlo Menotti The Great Yes, The Great No, an allegory of exile that combines theater, oratory and chamber opera and is inspired by the avant-garde. Between surrealism and irrationality, Greek choir, projections, dancers and shadow games create a multidimensional work that celebrates the unconventional, embraces the revolutionary and imagines a more authentic and free future.
The Carla Fendi Foundation and the Mahler&LeWitt Studios welcome “The Centre for the Less Good Idea”, a project founded by William Kentridge and Bronwyn Lace to promote experimentation and collaboration between artists from different disciplines. In particular, the exhibition Unhappen Unhappen Unhappen — Pepper's Ghost Dioramas, hosted in the spaces of the Former Baptistery of the Golden Mann, presents a preview of four animated dioramas created with the Pepper's Ghost technique by Anathi Conjwa, William Kentridge, Micca Manganye and Sabine Theunissen. To enrich the proposal, a rich program of related events including a practical introduction to Pepper's Ghost techniques, a live composition workshop with silent film archives and conversations with artists.
Finally, a solo exhibition by Kentridge is on display at Palazzo Collicola, curated by Saverio Verini in collaboration with the Kentridge Studio and the Lia Rumma gallery. The works of the South African author dialogue with the rooms of the building and its pre-existences — the furnishings, the paintings, the decorations —, creating an exhibition itinerary that unfolds through the rooms of the Piano Nobile.