A major exhibition of William Kentridge opens in Prague with The Battle Between YES and NO, on view from April 16th to September 7th, 2026 at Kunsthalle Praha. Curated by Christelle Havranek, the project gathers works spanning several decades, mapping a practice shaped by political history, personal memory, and a distinctly poetic sensibility.
Between affirmation, denial, and “noise”
Structured as a spatial collage, the exhibition resists linear narration. Instead, it unfolds through a constellation of fragments—drawings, films, sculptures, and performances—held in a state of tension. The title reflects Kentridge’s long-standing engagement with oppositions, where affirmation and denial collapse into a field of uncertainty he describes as “noise.”
Highlights include early films from the Drawings for Projection series (1989–2020), tracing South Africa’s passage through and beyond apartheid, alongside installations such as O Sentimental Machine (2015) and Right Into Her Arms (2016). More recent works, including To Cross One More Sea (2024), address exile and displacement, while A Letter to Felice (2026), developed for Prague, draws on Franz Kafka’s writings to construct a layered interplay of film, performance, and illusion.
A living landscape of thought and form
Across more than four decades, Kentridge has cultivated a language that moves between disciplines, grounded in improvisation and revision. His studio emerges as a site of continual testing, where meaning takes shape through fragments rather than resolution.
At Kunsthalle Praha, this approach unfolds as an environment of shifting associations, where image, sound, and gesture remain in dialogue. Rather than offering conclusions, the exhibition invites sustained attention—holding space for ambiguity, contradiction, and the fragile complexity of lived experience.
Photography by VOJTĚCH VEŠKRNA
