© William Kentridge
Currently not on view
Atlas Procession I,
2000
William Kentridge, born 1955, Johannesburg, South Africa; active Johannesburg
2002-412
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
Dates
2000
Maker
Medium
Etching, aquatint, drypoint, and letterpress, with gray wash on off-white moldmade paper
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
Object Number
2002-412
Signatures
Signed in graphite below plate, lower right: W. Kentridge
Inscription
Numbered in graphite below plate, lower left: 9/40
Subject
