Self-Portrait as a Coffee-Pot

Renowned South African artist William Kentridge's latest project is a dynamic, intimate archive that

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For more than four decades, William Kentridge has cultivated a protean artistic practice that defies easy categorisation.

His work navigates between drawing, animation, theatre, opera and installation, creating a complex, layered world in which memory, history and identity intertwine.

Within this vast body of work, Self-Portrait as a Coffee-Pot (2025) stands out as both a culmination and an intimate archive — a book and film series that invites the reader and viewer into the artist's studio, his mind and his collaborations.

The title itself — derived from a surreal image of Kentridge’s head replaced by a coffee pot — encapsulates the blend of humour, absurdity and self-reflection that permeates the project. As Kentridge revealed in a voice recording sent during the book’s production, Self-Portrait as a Coffee-Pot is about “not knowing exactly where the next page will lead, but trusting that something, in its own way, will connect”.

This openness to discovery mirrors the book’s fragmentary but rich texture, where philosophical musings, sketches, photographs and personal histories coexist without a rigid narrative.

One of the book’s powerful sequences is its reflection on political history through images of Stalin and the Soviet Politburo. Pages display archival photographs from the 1920s depicting 20 Politburo members standing in formal poses, gradually narrowing by the 1940s to only about five survivors of Stalin’s purges. This visual shrinking acts as a haunting metaphor for political violence and erasure.