William Kentridge is sharing the untold stories of Africans who served in World War I
On a stage stretching 50 meters wide, an ensemble of actors, dancers, and musicians come together to explore the forgotten history of Africans in the First World War.
Acclaimed South African artist William Kentridge is the creator of “The Head & The Load,” an immersive theatrical experience that brings to life the complex history of early 20th-century Africa. The son of anti-apartheid lawyers, Kentridge is known for his distinctive artistic style that combines illustration, animation, and film to confront social justice issues. In this show, Kentridge once again takes a multidisciplinary approach to engage audiences.
Ways of seeing, ways of knowing: Cassi Namoda in FT Magazine
In “The world is not what exists but what happens”, 34-year-old Mozambican artist Cassi Namoda paints an almost folkloric image of a small trail of people moving along a formless waterscape, united by the labour of carrying a large, thick cloth. The figures seem to float across the canvas in front of a curvaceous, tangerine-coloured mountain range. The clouds are swaths of coral, caramel, soft pink and sky blue. A tiny blood-red moon hangs at the top right-hand corner of the frame. In the lower half, on the right hand side, is a faint outline of a ladder in the water; perhaps a portal to another realm, an underworld open to the traversing of beings between different realities.
The Sunday Times: 'The Head and the Load' has landed
It has been five years since The Head and the Load, William Kentridge’s ambitious project about the experiences of Africans in World War 1, debuted on a 75m stage in the Turbine Hall at London’s Tate Modern. After much negotiation and planning, and the abandoning of a wild idea that it would be mounted in the concourse of Joburg’s Park Station, the production was scheduled to take place at the Joburg Theatre in April 2020.