“The head and the load are a trouble for the neck”, is a traditional Ghanaian proverb that William Kentridge has borrowed for the title of his latest work: a visual, musical and choreographic examination of Africa’s role in the First World War.

Over 2 million people from the African continent – most of them forced to work as bearers of weapons and materials for the colonial powers – went away to this European war. William Kentridge investigates this neglected and barely researched chapter in European and African history in a work of music theatre that is both installation and performance. The artist brings together a new composition by Philip Miller, the New York orchestral collective The Knights, an international company of performers, dancers and singers, a chorus of mechanical gramophones, overlapping film projections and shadow puppetry in a gigantic procession that defies all generic classification and could not be shown in a traditional theatre space.

From the date of his earliest animated films and drawings the Johannesburg-born artist William Kentridge has confronted unjust social and ethnic conflicts in both South Africa and Europe. Apartheid and the consequences of apartheid, together with more general colonialism, racism and totalitarianism have been and still are his themes, both in the visual arts and in his theatre and opera work. The upset caused by underlying social and ethnic injustice is a painful driver behind the personal lyrical visualization that Kentridge achieves in drawings, sculptures, films, installations, theatre and opera.

Kentridge’s works have been exhibited in museums and exhibitions on every continent. He has taken part in the Venice Biennale and documenta in Kassel on numerous occasions. The Head and the Load in the Kraftzentrale in Duisburg is the first time that this world-famous artist has been represented in the programme of the Ruhrtriennale.

BIOGRAPHIES