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History does not fade away: it transforms, returns, and resonates. It is from this tension between memory and the present that the new immersive project by William Kentridge takes shape. One of the most influential and visionary artists of our time, Kentridge arrives at the MAXXI with a total experience of moving images and sound. Drawing, animation, theatre, and opera intertwine in a language that Kentridge constructs as a critical, fragmented, and deeply political collage. At his side once again is composer Philip Miller, with whom he has collaborated since the 1990s in one of the most original creative partnerships on the contemporary scene. Together they bring back to life two key works from their shared trajectory: Triumphs and Laments, the ephemeral frieze that appeared along the Tiber in 2016, and The Head and the Load, a powerful visual procession addressing the historical erasure of Africa and Africans in the First World War. At the MAXXI, these works are reborn in the form of a cine-concert: a sweeping ribbon of images and an enveloping soundscape that immerse the viewer in a non-linear history shaped by layers, contradictions, and acts of resistance. Not a single narrative, but a constellation of memories that collide and converse.
Curated by Oscar Pizzo and Franco Laera, the project confirms Kentridge’s ability to transform history into a sensorial experience, where seeing and listening mean, above all, questioning the present.