William Kentridge, the South African artist, has produced an extraordinarily rich body of works during the last twenty years, ranging broadly across the mediums of painting, charcoal, drawing, film and theater. In a period when contemporary art trends predominantly towards abstract and conceptual art, his work seems to be able to hold the emphasis on figural representation, the depiction of particular context, and the use of narrative in a strong, novelistic manner.

In this paper I will analyze Kentridge’s Drawings for Projection series under the lens of different post-modern theories, borrowing words and ideas from art critics and curators.
After a short presentation of Kentridge’s post-modern attitude and a description of the animated, charcoal, hand-drawn Drawings for Projection series (1989—2011) from a formal and technical point of view, I will analyze the films using detailed examination by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev “In conversation with William Kentridge” in terms of post-modernism and post-structuralism.
Post-colonialism and representation of South African landscapes are the focal point of Dan Cameron’s “A Procession of the Dispossessed”, where he attempts a Marxist interpretation of the short film Mine.

With the help of The Shadow play as Medium of Memory by Andreas Huyssen, I will provide specific support for the post-structural interpretation of  Kentridge’s approach on time and memory. Finally, I will borrow the psychoanalytical and semiotics analysis applied to Kentridge’s body of work presented by Vanessa Thomson and Leswin Laubscher, in their paper “Violence, re-membering, and healing: a textual reading of Drawings for Projection by William Kentridge”.