William Kentridge has opened his first solo exhibition in Greece at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. Titled 'Imitate the Sleep of Stones: Orpheus, Eurydice, Transformation and Return', the show runs from 30 October 2026 to 24 January 2027 and places the South African artist's contemporary work in dialogue with antiquities from the museum's permanent collection. Curated by Burcu Fikretoglu, it was inaugurated on 30 October by Greece's Minister of Culture, Lina Mendoni.

The exhibition takes the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice as its thread. Kentridge's drawings, films and a diorama with dual-channel video are installed among the museum's ancient sculpture and artefacts, setting his shadowy, process-driven imagery against objects made more than two thousand years ago. The pairing extends a long preoccupation in Kentridge's work with memory, loss and return: the Orpheus story, in which the poet descends to the underworld to retrieve his wife and loses her again, has recurred through his drawing, theatre and opera over several decades.

The Athens opening coincides with Kentridge's staging of Monteverdi's L'Orfeo at the Greek National Opera, which premiered at the Stavros Niarchos Hall on 30 October and runs to 14 November, the first time the company has performed the 1607 opera. The museum exhibition opened on the eve of that premiere, giving the city a double Kentridge presence across the same week.

Kentridge, born in Johannesburg in 1955, is among the most widely exhibited artists of his generation, known for charcoal-drawn animated films, large-scale drawings and theatrical productions. A companion exhibition, 'William Kentridge. I Am Not Me, the Horse Is Not Mine', is on view at BOZAR in Brussels through 7 March 2027.