William KentridgeSobriety, Obesity, and Growing Old 1991

Kentridge makes short animation films from large-scale drawings in charcoal and pastel on paper. Each drawing, which contains a single scene, is successively altered through erasing and redrawing and photographed in 16 or 35mm film at each stage of its evolution. Remnants of successive stages remain on the paper, and provide a metaphor for the layering of memory which is one of Kentridge's principal themes. The films in this series, titled Drawings for Projection (see Tate T07482-4 and T07479-81), are set in the devastated landscape south of Johannesburg where derelict mine and factories, mine dumps and slime dams have created a terrain of nostalgia and loss. Kentridge's repeated erasure and redrawing, which leave marks but not complete transformation, together with the jerky movement of the animation, operate in parallel with his depiction of human processes, both physical and political, enacted on the landscape… (read more)