William Kentridge's China-centric art show opens in Johannesburg
'China certainly hovers over us like a huge zeppelin … Are we here the tethered goat waiting for the tiger?' artist writes in catalogue for his exhibition reimagining Eight Model Operas of Cultural Revolution, writes Ufrieda Ho
It's a sabbatical year for prominent South African artist William Kentridge but he's still causing a stir.
His exhibition "Notes Towards a Model Opera" is now on at Johannesburg's Goodman Gallery, after opening in China last June.
The exhibition tugs at the already tense threads that run through the China-in-Africa narrative. The timing of the show is significant, too, opening a month after the top-level Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (Focac) took place in the artist's native Johannesburg. Focac shored up trade and diplomatic ties and bagged a deal worth US$60 billion in development funding for the continent.
Kentridge clearly still has questions, writing in the exhibition programme: "China certainly hovers over us like a huge zeppelin. The scale of it, the scale of its hunger for resources, the scale of everything … Are we here the tethered goat waiting for the tiger? Easy pickings?"
It therefore came as no surprise when the catalogues for his Beijing exhibition, at the Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art, had to be published in Hong Kong after printers in China declined the job.