Ink Rats
Current Events
Installation
William Kentridge & Philip Miller: Breathe Dissolve Return
February 3 – April 6, 2026
MAXXI, Rome
Galleria 5
Exhibition
Listen to the Echo
September 6, 2025 – June 28, 2026
Puppenteatersammlung, Kraftwerkmitte
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden
Forthcoming Events
Performance
Oh To Believe in Another World
February 13, 2026
Dresdner Philharmonie
Kulturpalast Konzertsaal, Dresden
A sporadic record of what happens in the studio, in video, words and images
📣 OPENING TONIGHT IN MILAN 📣
SHARPEN YOUR PHILOSOPHY
January 29 – March 28, 2026
Galleria Lia Rumma, Milan
A solo exhibition of new and recent works—including drawings and prints, a diorama, a paravent, large and medium-scale aluminum and bronze sculptures and video installations.
Video excerpt from “To Cross One More Sea”, a three channel film installation related to the recent chamber opera, “The Great Yes, The Great No”
📣 OPENING IN ROME TOMORROW 📣
William Kentridge & Philip Miller
BREATHE DISSOLVE RETURN
January 29 – February 1, 2026
MAXXI, Rome
Galleria 5
Cine-concert in a prologue and two parts with special live musical performance:
Video, two sopranos, tenor, bass, piano, clarinet, viola, accordion, kora and percussion
Thursday 29 January at: 6 and 8 pm
Friday 30 January and Sunday 1 February at: 12, 4, 6 and 8 pm
Saturday 31 January at: 12:30, 4 and 6 pm
Films by William Kentridge
Music composed by Philip Miller
Project commissioned and produced by MAXXI (Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo)
Change Performing Arts
Curated by Oscar Pizzo and Franco Laera
Video editing by Žana Marović
With thanks to @liarummagallery
📣 WORLD PREMIERE TONIGHT IN LUCERNE 📣
O, QUICKLY DISAPPEARING PHOTOGRAPH
January 17, 2026, 19h00
Konzertsaal, KKL, Lucerne
2026 FESTIVAL CLOSING CONCERT WITH MARTHA ARGERICH & WORLD PREMIERE BY WILLIAM KENTRIDGE
“O Quickly Disappearing Photograph”
A film about Quaderno musicale di Annalibera by Luigi Dallapiccola
Commissioned by the piano festival “Le Piano Symphonique”
Film: William Kentridge
Pianist: Mirabelle Kajenjeri
Editing: Žana Marović
Producers: The Office performance art + film
Luigi Dallapiccola (1904–1975)
Quaderno musicale di Annalibera for piano
“A Letter to Felice”
Film sequence for a new work being made for the upcoming exhibition, “The Battle Between YES & NO” at @kunsthallepraha (April 14 - September 7, 2026)
Eurydice
Animation for the forthcoming production of Monteverdi’s “L’Orfeo” at @glyndebourne, to be conducted by @jonny_arcangelo, as part of the Glyndebourne Festival, 14 June - 25 July, 2026
Paper Procession VII, 2025
Steel, aluminum sheets, oil paint
136 x 70 x 39 cm
Idiosyncratic lines of enquiry into particular aspects of studio practice or bodies of work
William Kentridge: Creative Machines
William Kentridge puts to use a diversity of ‘creative machines’ in making work. He methodologically rethinks drawing, as an unfinished process, a means of collecting and generating iconography, with the aim of maximizing narrative amplitude that goes beyond the limits of graphic representation by resorting to sound and cinematography.
Stumbling to Utopia
“Why continue with these gestures, with these drawings, these words, in the face of their imminent failure? Because without some idea of utopia, of a rescued world implicit not just in these gestures but in the act of making a drawing, a performance, a speech – without this we feel a gap, a hollow.” WK, 2016
Listening to the Trees
An anecdotal account of the making of the book “Waiting for the Sibyl” and a consideration of Kentridge’s ongoing series of tree drawings, by book designer Oliver Barstow
9 WORDS and one more
Making art is a uniquely human endeavour and an artist, the maker of art, is someone who distills what they feel and think about the world and expresses this visually. This requires one to read, to see, to listen, to feel, to question and be curious; to know, and yet to doubt; to have humility and to be brave.
All so different from what you expected
Things which are obvious in studio practice, like uncertainty, doubt, provisionality, are not about the COVID pandemic. They are themes I have worked on for many years – but these themes in the outside world have become much more present in these months.
Cursive
Cursive is the third set in a series of small bronze glyphs, following “Lexicon” (2017) and “Paragraph II” (2018). The glyphs started as a collection of ink drawings and paper cut-outs, each on a single page from a dictionary.
