If you haven’t seen this documentary (trailer above) on South African artist William Kentridge yet, take your time for it. William Kentridge: Anything is Possible is the first in a series of Art21-produced features focusing on contemporary art and artists. Kentridge, as always, captures the essence of recent and less recent times: “This extraordinary nonsense hierarchy (we had in South Africa) made one understand the absurd not as a peripheral mistake at the edge of a society but as a central point of construction, so that the absurd for me is always a species of realism rather than a species of joke or fun.”

You can watch the documentary in its entirety here.

– Tom Devriendt

Further Reading

Fuel’s errand

When Africa’s richest man announced the construction of the continent’s largest crude oil refinery, many were hopeful. But Aliko Dangote has not saved Nigeria. The Nigerian Scam returns to the Africa Is a Country Podcast to explain why.

Fragile state

Without an immediate change in approach, Somalia will remain a fragmented country populated by self-serving elites seeking foreign patrons.

Coming home

In 1991, acclaimed South African artist Helen Sebidi’s artworks were presumed stolen in Sweden. Three decades later, a caretaker at the residential college where they disappeared found them in a ceiling cupboard, still in their original packaging.

Imaginary homelands

A new biography of former apartheid homeland leader Lucas Mangope struggles to do more than arrange the actions of its subject into a neat chronology.