South African artist, filmmaker, theater and opera director William Kentridge, who was born in Johannesburg in 1955, uses a wide variety of media to deal with themes such as social injustice, the history of South Africa, colonialism, family, flight and expulsion in his work. Growing up as a child of anti-apartheid engaged parents in South Africa, world politics became part of Kentridge's own biography and work. Kentridge's works visualize the socio-cultural impact of post-colonialism and apartheid from the perspective of his homeland. At the beginning of his artistic practice, however, there is always drawing, which is used as the main medium, especially in his animated films, which have made him famous. But also in other media, such as in his sculptures - which seem to oscillate formally between Cubism and Pop Art and charge banal everyday objects with a special presence - his forms of expression are visibly based on the principle of drawing.
Since the 1990s, Kentridge's work has been exhibited worldwide, including at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Louvre in Paris and the Whitechapel Gallery in London. William Kentridge was also a multiple participant at the documenta in Kassel and the Venice Biennale.
