Porter Series: Egypte

Part of William Kentridge’s Porter series, Egpyte is a monumental tapestry that exemplifies the artist’s ability to intertwine tradition with the contemporary, and politics with culture, into works replete with narrative. Other editions of Egypte have been presented at several important institutions internationally: William Kentridge: Tapestries at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2007 (the first exhibition of the artist’s tapestries in the United States); William Kentridge: Tapestries – A Collaboration with Stephens Tapestry Studio at the Wits Art Museum in Johannesburg; and Smoke, Ashes, Fable: William Kentridge in Bruges. Egypte forms part of the Porter series’ exploration of movement and migration. Burdened by their belongings—a chair atop the woman’s head and a rucksack strapped to her companion—two silhouetted figures march across the frontiers of the map’s woven surface. Unidentified by age, ethnicity or citizenship, Kentridge’s shadowy people represent the universal experiences of movement across countries and continents. Traversing the intricate 19^th-century map, they evoke a period in which our world saw an increase in human mobility and migration, both forced and free-willed, which has led to the globalised world we occupy today. Kentridge’s anonymous figures remind us that migration has shaped our history and continues to mould our modernity.

Tapestry lends itself to Kentridge’s evocation of movement. In her review of the Philadelphia exhibition, Roberta Smith noted that ‘the weaving process could almost be said to animate the collages, to give them a visual energy bordering on motion’ (R. Smith, ‘Shadowy Nomads, Writ in Warp and Woof’, New York Times, 31 December 2007). Indeed, the warps and wefts of the mohair felt conjure the skilled hands that have worked to weave the threads together, while scrawls and sparks of red, blue and yellow woollen embroidery dance within the two figures’ shadowy silhouettes. Tapestry itself holds a complex history. Caught in the divide between art and craft, the ancient tradition has formed a vital method of story-telling throughout the East and West for millennia.

Since 2001, Kentridge has enlisted this historic craft in close collaboration with Marguerite Stephens’ tapestry studio. Beginning with torn paper collages of black silhouettes spliced atop reproductions of 19^th-century maps, Kentridge works closely with Stephens’ master weavers to develop the final works. The studio uses hand-carded and hand-spun mohair grown in South Africa, bringing Kentridge’s narratives to life with enormous technical skill. As the Studio Edition, the present work represents the final tapestry of the edition to ever be made. A selection of these tapestries were brought together for Kentridge’s groundbreaking exhibition at the Royal Academy in 2022, the artist’s largest exhibition in the UK. Set amongst his multi-media practice, from charcoal drawing to animation, theatre and opera, it is evident that Kentridge’s tapestries are integral to his career-spanning commitment to depicting and understanding a world in transition.