I AM NOT ME, THE HORSE IS NOT MINE Exhibition Opens at Bozar

From 18 September 2026 to 7 March 2027, Bozar will present I am not me, the horse is not mine, a major exhibition devoted to William Kentridge (Johannesburg, b. 1955), one of the most influential artists of our time. Spanning more than four decades of artistic practice, from the early 1980s to today, the exhibition brings together drawing, animated film, sculpture, printmaking, installation and video, with particular attention to several of his major stage productions. The exhibition highlights the performative and collaborative nature of Kentridge's practice, revealing how art becomes a space for political inquiry, historical reckoning and poetic transformation.

Taking over one of Bozar's major exhibition circuits of ten galleries, Kentridge also creates site-specific works for the occasion, such as the monumental Ubu wall drawing or the tribute to the late South African dancer and choreographer Dada Masilo (on Bozar's stairs).

September also marks the start of a wider collaboration: William Kentridge is Bozar's first Grand Invité. Throughout the '26-'27 season, his work and ideas resonate across the Centre for Fine Arts through his exhibition, but also performances, concerts, talks and collaborations with a new generation of artists. The Centre for the Less Good Idea, an artistic workshop co-founded by Bronwyn Lace and William Kentridge in 2016 in Johannesburg, will be at the heart of this creative effervescence.

William Kentridge began his artistic career at the height of the political struggle against the apartheid regime in his native South Africa. His work bears witness to a profound commitment – at once social, political and poetic – that continues to shape his artistic practice to this day. Firmly rooted in the history of South Africa, it opens onto broader reflections on human history, its contradictions, recurring violence and capacity for transformation.

Over more than four decades, Kentridge has developed an artistic language in which images, ideas and forms are continuously set in motion. Drawing becomes animation; animation enters an installation or migrates onto the stage; images and objects reappear in new configurations. This constant transformation and shape-shifting across media has become one of the defining characteristics of his practice.

William Kentridge observes: “I make drawings and sometimes the drawings are filmed and become animated films. Sometimes there are performers in front of the animated film and they become theatre or opera. So it becomes a drawing in four dimensions.”