William Kentridge pays homage to Franz Kafka in a major Prague exhibition at Kunsthalle Praha

Kunsthalle Praha presents The Battle Between YES and NO, a large-scale exhibition by William Kentridge, one of the most celebrated artists of our time. Running from 16 April to 7 September, the exhibition will bring together early charcoal films, theatrical installations, recent video works, and sculptures, the exhibition also introduces a new work created specifically for the Kunsthalle. A Letter to Felice (2026) is a tribute to Franz Kafka that anchors the exhibition in its Prague context. Through drawing, animation, opera, and installation, Kentridge articulates his belief in complexity and ambiguity as an antidote to rigid certainty.

Raised in Johannesburg during apartheid, William Kentridge developed an artistic practice shaped by South Africa’s political realities while addressing universal questions of power, memory, responsibility, and hope. Over more than four decades, he has worked across drawing, printmaking, sculpture, performance, film, and opera, developing a distinctive visual language.

The exhibition takes its title from a series of early prints and animations in which Kentridge merges the words “Yes” and “No” to create “Noise”. This gesture captures a defining quality of his work: the exposure of contradictions and the sustained tension between meaning and absurdity, visibility and erasure.

“From early films to recent operas, Kentridge pursues the same quest: bringing disciplines, cultures, and eras into dialogue to reveal the complexity of memory and thought. Sensory and immersive, the Prague exhibition shows both the extraordinary diversity of the South African artist’s practice and the coherence of his approach over time. Addressing colonial histories, forced migrations, and the failures of twentieth-century utopias, it makes clear that Kentridge’s work resists simple answers; instead, it opens our eyes to the world’s enduring questions,” says Christelle Havranek, exhibition curator and chief curator at Kunsthalle Praha.

Conceived as a spatial collage, the exhibition unfolds without strict chronology. Early animated films from the Drawings for Projection series, including works that reflect South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy, appear alongside theatrical installations such as Right into Her Arms (2016) and the five-channel video installation O Sentimental Machine (2015), inspired by a little-known episode in the life of Leon Trotsky and set within a reconstructed landing of the Splendid Palace Hotel.

The recent work To Cross One More Sea (2024), whose script draws largely on texts by intellectuals from the former French Caribbean colonies, reflects on migration and exile, themes that recur throughout Kentridge’s practice. It is presented alongside multidisciplinary projects developed with The Centre for the Less Good Idea, founded by Kentridge in Johannesburg in 2016 as a space for experimentation, research, and the emergence of new art forms. Bringing together artists across disciplines, the Centre functions as an incubator for collaborative thinking in a city still marked by the absence of dedicated creative institutions.

A defining moment of the Prague presentation is A Letter to Felice (2026), created specifically for this exhibition. For the first time, Kentridge has explicitly dedicated a work to Franz Kafka. Drawing on fragments from around twenty of Kafka’s texts, such as novels, diaries, and letters, including one addressed to Kafka’s fiancée Felice Bauer, the work assembles and rearranges passages into a six-act drama, culminating in a silent film in which Kentridge himself appears wearing a Kafka mask. Employing the Victorian theatrical device of the Pepper’s ghost illusion, the installation brings together archival imagery, sound, objects, performance, and projection within a compact, layered environment.

Across the exhibition, the artist studio emerges as both subject and method, a “space for not knowing,” where hesitation, error, and doubt are integral to creation. A restaged studio environment within the gallery offers insight into Kentridge’s process, revealing how fragments, revisions, and improvisation shape the final work. Rather than offering answers, The Battle Between YES and NO affirms uncertainty as a vital creative force, a perspective that resonates powerfully in a city so closely associated with Kafka’s legacy.

William Kentridge: The Battle Between YES and NO runs from 16 April to 7 September 2026. 

On the occasion of the exhibition, Kunsthalle Praha will publish the complete transcripts of the lectures Kentridge delivered at the University of Oxford in 2024. Combining personal reflection with analytical insight, the six lectures explore the birth of an idea, the role of error, and the power of revision, tracing how a fragment evolves into a finished work. The richly illustrated publication includes a foreword by the Dutch poet Alfred Schaffer and a curatorial text by Christelle Havranek. 

The exhibition is accompanied by an extensive public programme of talks, screenings, and workshops, as well as a members-only discussion between William Kentridge and Christelle Havranek on 13 April. 

Visitors under the age of 26 are eligible for complimentary membership, allowing access to all Kunsthalle Praha exhibitions for free.