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William Kentridge,
History of the Main Complaint,
1996.
Video with sound, 00:05:50, Dimensions vary with installation.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,
Purchased with funds contributed by The Peter Norton Family Foundation and by the International Director's Council and Executive Committee Members: Ann Ames, Edythe Broad, Henry Buhl, Elaine Terner Cooper, Dimitris Daskalopoulos, Harry David, Gail May Eng.
2000.118.
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In 1989 Johannesburg-based artist William Kentridge began creating his series of hand-drawn films that focus on apartheid- and postapartheid-era South Africa through the lens of two fictive white characters, the pensively reflective Felix Teitlebaum and the aggressive industrialist Soho Eckstein, who can be seen as alter egos. Kentridge's animated films are composed from his charcoal and pastel drawings, which he vigorously reworks, leaving traces of erasure, redrawing, and often highly visible pentimenti. Two key works in this series are Felix in Exile (1994) and History of the Main Complaint (1996). Made just before the African National Congress's landmark election to power, Felix in Exile is a richly nuanced exploration of the landscape as witness, wherein memories of the devastatingly violent rule of apartheid and the struggle against it are rendered visible to Felix through the gaze of Nandi, a black South African woman who surveys the land. Kentridge created History of the Main Complaint around the time the Truth and Reconciliation Commission began meeting to publicly examine apartheid-era human-rights abuses and other crimes in an effort to unearth truth and move beyond the wrongs of the past. In the film, X rays and CAT scans probe beneath the surface of a comatose Soho, revealing violent acts committed against black South Africans. It is only through Soho's acknowledgment of his responsibility that he can be roused back into consciousness.
Kentridge is also renowned for his theater-based work, including his collaborations with the Handspring Puppet Company, in which complex multimedia performances combine puppets, animation, projection, and live action. In his performance-based pieces as well as his video sculptures and hand-drawn films, Kentridge's inclusion of both the hand of the puppeteer, as well as traces and erasures of his drawings allude to a multilayered and complex notion of history and narrative crafting, in which it is revealed how much the actor is acted upon and how notions of agency are called into question.
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