A master draughtsman, illustrator, filmmaker and sculptor, William Kentridge is also a prolific theatre-maker who has collaborated with local theatre groups and world-renowned opera houses for more than four decades. His practice encompasses theatrical, musical and operatic projects with visual components that appear and reappear in different articulations. Centring around the human condition, his multifaceted imagery is often interwoven with the social, political and economic realities of South Africa.

A Shadow of a Shadow is a survey of 17 performances created by Kentridge from the late 1980s to the present, from his interpretations of King Ubu—the outrageous protagonist from Alfred Jarry’s play Ubu Roi [King Ubu] (1896)—and Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute, to Kentridge’s original works such as The Head and the Load (2018) about Africa and Africans in World War I. On view are objects and artworks produced for the development and presentation of these performance projects: drawings, stage backdrops, animations, puppets, props, costumes and installations inspired by theatrical illusions.

The title of the exhibition is drawn from a play by thirteenth-century playwright and puppeteer Ibn Daniyal, who fled Iraq to escape the Mongol invasions. Prompted by the sense that the world was ending, Ibn Daniyal created shadow plays that ridiculed authorities and exposed corrupt social mores, tropes that would appear again centuries later in Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi and Kentridge’s adaptation of Ubu. While nodding to Kentridge’s predilection for shadow plays and puppet theatre, A Shadow of a Shadow also pays homage to his incisive political rebuke of authoritarianism through absurdist satire and theatricality. Together, the works selected for this exhibition speak to the artist’s ongoing critique of social constructs, power structures and the colonial project’s metamorphic manifestations.

The exhibition is curated by Hoor Al Qasimi, Director of Sharjah Art Foundation, and Tarek Abou El Fetouh, Senior Curator and Director of the Performance Department, with May Alqaydi, Assistant Curator, and Khalid Mohammed, Curatorial Assistant, Sharjah Art Foundation.