William Kentridge : My Father is a Tree in a Forest of Fathers

William Kentridge

My Father is a Tree in a Forest of Fathers I & II, 2024

DKWxJRP Collaboration

Collaborating Printers: Jillian Ross – Editioning printers: Roxy Kaczmarek and Sbongiseni Khulu

In October 2023, David Krut Projects welcomed Master printer Jillian Ross and Brendan Copestake from Jillian Ross Print (Saskatoon, Canada), to the Workshop for an exciting collaboration with William Kentridge. The prints produced are based on Kentridge’s new performance in development: “The Great YES, the Great NO“, co-produced by William Kentridge and The Centre for the Less Good Idea, which will be presented in July, 2024, in Aix-en Provence, France. The production follows a boat trip from Marseille to Martinique – a small island that was an important site for many well-known figures including Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, André Breton and Josephine Baker. Using the potential of the boat as a metaphor for power, trade, migration and more, the production will draw on many of the processes and methodologies that have become central to both Kentridge and The Centre’s ways of working.”

The performance centres around a historical escape from Vichy France by, among others, the surrealist André Breton, the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, the Cuban artist Wifredo Lam, the communist novelist Victor Serge, and the author Anna Seghers. The performance fictionalises this journey by including these figures such as Aimé Césaire, the Nardal sisters (co-founders with Césaire of the anti-colonial Négritude movement in Paris), Frantz Fanon, Josephine Bonaparte, Josephine Baker, Trotsky, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, and more.

“Kentridge has been working closely with Jillian Ross since February 2023 to develop a new print series in response to this stage production. The prints are jungle-like scenes, which began as ink-drawings and collages from one of the many backdrops of The Great Yes, The Great No, and are layered with insightful texts that relate to many of the production’s themes.” – Jillian Ross Print

My Father Is a Tree in a Forest of Fathers I, 2024

Photogravure with drypoint, photopolymer, chine collé and collage

Hahnemuhle Natural 300gsm

75 x 93,7cm

Edition of 20

The image is based on a drawing by Kentridge titled There Were No Books, 2023 (Paint, Indian ink, Charcoal, Coloured pencil and Collage on paper, size: 152 x 178 cm). The drawing was shown at his solo exhibition What Have They Done with All the Air?, 2023, an exhibition of new drawings and sculptures by William Kentridge, at the Goodman Gallery, Cape Town.

The intaglio plates used for the ‘Garden’ imagery were made in Canada and brought to DKW, South Africa, to continue the collaboration with William. The Photogravure plates were made by Steven Dixon and Luke Johnson at the University of Alberta (Edmonton, Canada) and the photopolymer plates by Nathanael Kooperkamp at Cone Editions (Vermont, USA). The plates and images were further developed by Jillian Ross and Kim-Lee Loggenberg-Tim, Sbongiseni Khulu, Roxy Kaczmarek, Sarah Judge and Jesse Shepstone at the David Krut Workshop (Johannesburg, South Africa).

The work has developed into a series of large and small-scale variations made from composite layering in combination of photogravure, plates with added drypoint, photopolymer, with chine collé from Gampi, found dictionary pages, Tosa Washi and Kitakata papers.

My Father is a Tree in a forest of fathers was editioned at the David Krut Workshop in two variations.