William Kentridge: I am not me, the horse is not mine

Limited seating available. Tickets must be purchased in advance from the ticket desk at Garage.
Tickets go on sale on 15 September 2011.

The exhibition will remain open for ticket-holders until 21.30.
Seating for the performance begins at 21.30. Doors close at 21.50.
Latecomers will not be permitted entry.

The performance will last approximately 45 minutes.

“A man wakes up one morning and finds his nose gone…”

Join us to watch the South African artist William Kentridge’s acclaimed performance, I am not me, the horse is not mine, as the highlight of a special program accompanying the exhibition, William Kentridge: Five Themes.

Part lecture, part performance, part installation – his performance is based on the absurdist short story The Nose (1836), by the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol, which follows the travails of a pompous Russian bureaucrat who wakes one day to find his nose has escaped his face and assumed greater clout than he. This comic and visually stimulating performance emerged as part of Kentridge’s development of Dmitry Shostakovich’s opera, The Nose (1930), and reflects Kentridge’s ongoing interest in Russian modernism.

This is a unique opportunity to witness the history of the Russian avant-garde reinvented and interpreted by one of the most fascinating and eloquent artists of our time.

William Kentridge studied at the Johannesburg Art Foundation and the Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris. He was a founding member of the Free Filmmakers Co-operative in 1988. His work has been seen in museums and galleries around the world since the 1990s, including the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels (1998), the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2001), the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1998 and 2010), the Albertine Museum, Vienna (2010) and Jeu de Paume, Paris (2010). Kentridge has participated in a number of international biennials and in Documenta X (1997) and XI (2002). Kentridge’s production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute was presented at Theatre de la Monnaie, Brussels, Festival d’Aix and La Scala, Milan (2011). He directed Shostakovich’s The Nose for the Met Opera, New York in 2010 (the production goes to Festival d’Aix and to Lyon in 2011) to coincide with a major exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Also in 2010, the Musee du Louvre, Paris presented Carnets d’Egypte, a project conceived especially for the Egyptian room at the Louvre. A recipient of numerous prizes, in 2010 Kentridge was awarded the prestigious Kyoto Prize in recognition of his contributions in the field of arts and philosophy. In 2011, Kentridge was elected as an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.