© William Kentridge
Interpretation
Atlas Procession I and II relate closely to Kentridge’s film Shadow Procession (1999) in which cardboard cutouts of anonymous figures plod across the screen, dragging their belongings as if in exodus from violent conflict. These prints incorporate reproductions of old maps of islands between Greece and Turkey and of the China Sea, historical sites of imperial struggles. Enigmatic and monumental, these circular marches evoke an endless cycle of refugees fleeing wars and oppression and longing for home. Like much of Kentridge’s work, Atlas Procession I and II map a personal contemplation across the fraught legacy of apartheid and colonialism in South Africa.
Information
- Title
- Atlas Procession I
- Object Number
- 2002-412
- Maker
- William Kentridge
- Medium
- Etching, aquatint, drypoint, and letterpress, with gray wash on off-white moldmade paper
- Dates
- 2000
- Dimensions
- plate (copper): 149 × 98 cm (58 11/16 × 38 9/16 in.) sheet: 158 × 108 cm (62 3/16 × 42 1/2 in.) frame: 175.6 × 125.1 × 3.5 cm (69 1/8 × 49 1/4 × 1 3/8 in.)
- Credit Line
- Museum purchase, Felton Gibbons Fund
- Signatures
- Signed in graphite below plate, lower right: W. Kentridge
- Inscriptions
- Numbered in graphite below plate, lower left: 9/40
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