William Kentridge: The Refusal of Time (installation view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) 2012 , five-channel video with sound, megaphones, and breathing machine, 30 minutes. A collaboration with Philip Miller, Catherine Meyburgh, and Peter Galison. Jointly owned by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art © 2012 William Kentridge. Purchase, Roy R. and Marie S. Neuberger Foundation Inc. and Wendy Fisher Gifts and the Raymond and Beverly Sackler 21st Century Art Fund, 2013. © 2012 William Kentridge
Inspired by ideas about the relativity of time as conceived by both Einstein and French mathematician Henri Poincaré, the renowned South African artist William Kentridge has created a multimedia installation that examines colonialism and chronology. The work, which combines kinetic sculpture and video rife with Kentridge’s trademark stop-motion animated imagery, suggests that the colonized frequently refuse the colonizer’s standardized notions of temporality. In an intriguing development in museum practice, it is a joint acquisition by the Metropolitan Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.