William Kentridge & Nalini Malani: The Shadow Play as Medium of Memory

This comparative study of contemporary artists William Kentridge (born 1955) and Nalini Malani (born 1946) focuses on their use of the shadow play as a medium of memory. Independently of each other, both artists have deployed this centuries-old performative art form in works that are widely considered to be highpoints of their respective careers--works such as Kentridge's installation The Refusal of Time and Malani's video/shadow play In Search of Vanished Blood. Both artists belong to a generation whose experience is shaped by colonialism and decolonization; their works reflect on the long-term traces of historical trauma, partition and apartheid, always in aesthetically complex forms (rather than in documentary or agit-prop style). In creative dialogue with modernism and the historical avant-garde, they provide persuasive examples of a new negotiation between aesthetics, ethics and politics.