William Kentridge’s Rider (2018) is a powerful evocation of equestrian monumentality – a genre traditionally associated with imperial authority, conquest, and state propaganda. In this etching, rendered in Kentridge’s signature gestural line, a solitary figure rides a rearing horse across a densely worked landscape. The work draws on both classical motifs and anti-monumental impulses, characteristic of Kentridge’s practice.

The figure on horseback evokes the form of the equestrian statue, a convention historically used to glorify military and political leaders – from Marcus Aurelius to Napoleon to Cecil Rhodes. But in Kentridge’s Rider, the monumental is unsettled. The horse’s posture suggests movement and instability, while the rider appears indistinct, even anonymous. This lack of heroic definition is telling: it subverts the triumphalist logic of colonial statuary and points instead to a more fractured, ambivalent historical narrative.

This critical stance is consistent with Kentridge’s long-running interrogation of power, memory, and representation. In post-apartheid South Africa, the role of monuments has been a deeply contested issue, and Rider can be read as a meditation on what should be remembered, and how.

The print was created using a combination of sugarlift aquatint and drypoint – techniques that allow for both painterly washes and incisive, expressive lines. The image is printed on handmade Phumani sisal and hemp paper, made at the Phumani Paper Mill in South Africa, then mounted onto Arches – a deliberate choice that connects the work to local labour practices and traditional craft, and reinforces Kentridge’s commitment to collaborative production.

Rider is part of a broader corpus of works in which Kentridge revisits classical and colonial iconography through a contemporary South African lens. It relates thematically to projects like The Head & the Load (2018), a multimedia performance exploring the overlooked role of African porters and soldiers in World War I. Both works confront the erasure of African agency in dominant historical narratives, using absurdity, fragmentation, and visual metaphor to destabilise power.

In the context of 2018, a year marked by continued global debates around the removal and reinterpretation of colonial monuments, Rider can be understood as a reflection on what it means to carry, ride, or impose history. Kentridge’s rider may be both a stand-in for colonial might and a cipher for its undoing.