City of Moscow (Map: Geodetic Bureau for the planning of the City of Moscow, 1940), 2009

Born in 1955 in Johannesburg to lawyer parents close to the group of anti-apartheid activists, on the paternal side, Kentridge descends from Lithuanian Jews who escaped from the Russian pogroms of the end of the nineteenth century. Despite having belonged to a white and privileged family, he grew up with a profound sensitivity towards human suffering, in particular that inflicted by the segregationist regime. An extraordinary and eclectic artist, he has adopted multiple expressive languages – from drawing to film, from sculpture to theatrical set design – in order to address the themes of social injustice, racism, bourgeois hypocrisy and the long and winding path of reconciliation in South Africa. . [...]